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GIFT  OF 

Kate  Gordon  Moore 


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BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  HISTORICAL 


ESSAYS. 


THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY. 


^l?Sa^ 

[S^^^i 

&^?W-^^^ 

^^g^^^s 

iK^H 

pJfKiiftrgtop^^M 

BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK  : 

HOUGHTON.  MTFFLTX  AND  COMPANY. 

(arbf  lilitcrsibe  l?rcs8,  <jrambcib0c. 


Xntered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1853,  by 

TiCKHOR  AND  Fields, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts 


COPTEIOHT,  1877, 
Bl  HUBD  AND  HOUGHTON. 


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106     , 

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PUBLISHERS'  ADVERTISEMENT. 


The  present  edition  is  a  reissue  of  the  Works  of 
Thomas  De  Quincey.  The  series  is  based  upon  the 
American  Edition  of  De  Quincey's  Works,  pub- 
lished originally  in  twenty-two  volumes.  After 
that  edition  was  issued,  a  complete  English  edition 
was  published  in  Edinburgh  and  was  edited  and 
revised  in  part  by  the  author.  This  edition  con- 
tained changes  and  additions,  and  the  opportunity 
has  been  taken,  in  reissuing  the  American  edition, 
to  incorporate  the  new  material  which  appeared 
in  tlie  English  edition.  At  the  same  time,  the 
arrangement  of  the  several  productions  is  more 
systematic  and  orderly  than  was  possible  when  the 
collection  was  first  made,  at  different  intervals, 
under  difficulties  which  render  the  work  of  the 
first  editor  especially  praiseworthy.  In  the  final 
volume,  an  introduction  to  the  series  sets  forth  the 
plan  carried  out  in  this  new  arrangement,  and  that 
volume  also  contains  a  very  full  index  to  the  entire 
series.  Throughout  the  series,  the  notes  of  the 
editor  are  distinguished  from  those  of  the  author 
by  being  inclosed  in  brackets  [  ]. 


8G9003 


PROM  THE  AUTHOR,  TO  THE  AMERICAN  EDITOR 
OF  HIS  WORKS.* 

These  papers  I  am  anxious  to  put  into  the  hands  of  your 
house,  and,  so  far  as  regards  the  IT-  S.,  of  your  house  exclu- 
sively ;  not  with  any  view  to  further  emolument,  but  as  an 
acknowledgment  of  the  ser\aces  which  you  have  already  ren- 
dered me :  namely,  first,  in  having  brought  together  so  widely 
scattered  a  collection,  —  a  difficulty  which  in  my  own  hands 
by  too  painful  an  experience  I  had  foimd  from  nervous  de- 
pression to  be  absolutely  insurmountable ;  secondly,  in  hav- 
ing made  me  a  participator  in  the  pecuniary  profits  of  the 
American  edition,  without  solicitation  or  the  shadow  of  any 
expectation  on  my  part,  without  any  legal  claim  that  I  could 
plead,  or  equitable  warrant  in  established  usage,  solely  and 
merely  upon  your  own  spontaneous  motion.  Some  of  these 
new  papers,  I  hope,  will  not  be  without  their  value  in  the 
eyes  of  those  who  have  taken  an  interest  in  the  original 
series.  But  at  all  events,  good  or  bad,  they  are  noAV  ten- 
dered to  the  appropriation  of  your  individual  house,  the 
Messrs.  Ticknok  and  Fields,  according  to  the  amplest 
extent  of  any  power  to  make  such  a  transfer  that  I  may  be 
found  to  possess  by  law  or  custom  in  America. 

I  wish  this  transfer  were  likely  to  be  of  more  value.     But 
the  veriest  trifle,  interpreted  by  the  spirit  in  which  I  offer  it, 
may  express  my  sense  of  the  liberality  manifested  throughout 
this  transaction  by  your  honorable  house. 
Ever  believe  me,  my  dear  sir. 

Your  faithful  and  obliged, 

THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY. 

*  The  stereotype  plates  of  De  Quincev's  Works  and  the  right  of 
^ublicatlea  have  passed,  by  direct  succession,  from  Tickxob  amd 
Fib  IDS  to  HouQHTOH,  Mifflis  and  Company. 


PEEFAOE. 


[Thk  essays  in  the  present  volume  are  mainly  bio- 
graphical, but  include  some  which  are  quite  as  closely 
allied  to  history,  in  the  case  of  persons  the  interest  in 
whom  is  dependent  upon  their  prominence  in  historic 
movements.  Those  upon  Shakspeare,  Goethe,  and 
SchiUer,  were  contributed  to  the  seventh  edition  of 
the  Encylopsedia  Britannica.  De  Quincey's  own  esti- 
mate of  the  article  on  Shakspeare  may  be  inferred 
from  the  following  letter  which  he  wrote  to  the  Editor 
of  the  Encyclopaedia :  — 

"July  16,  1838. 

"  No  paper  ever  cost  me  so  much  labor :  parts  of  it 
have  been  recomposed  three  times  over.  And  thus 
far  I  anticipate  your  approval  of  this  article,  that  no 
one  question  has  been  neglected  which  I  ever  heard 
of  in  connection  with  Shakspeare's  name  ;  and  I  fear 
no  rigor  of  examination,  notwithstanding  I  have  had 
no  books  to  assist  me  but  the  two  volumes  lent  me 
by  yourself  (viz.,  1st  vol.  of  Alex.  Chalmers's  edit. 
1826,  and  the  late  popular  edit,  in  one  vol.  by  Mr. 
Campbell).  The  sonnets  I  have  been  obliged  to  quote 
by  memory,  and  for  many  of  my  dates  or  other  mate- 
rials to  depend  solely  on  my  memory." 

Subsequently   he    adds,   "The    Shakspeare   article 


n  PRBKACB. 

cost  me  more  intense  labor  than  any  I  ever  wrote  in 
my  life.  The  final  part  has  cost  me  a  vast  deal  of  la- 
bor in  condensing ;  and  I  believe,  if  you  examine  it 
you  will  not  complain  of  want  of  novelty,  which  luck- 
ily was  in  this  case  quite  reconcilable  with  truth,  —  so 
deep  is  the  mass  of  error  which  has  gathered  abou'. 
Shakspeare." 

The  paper  on  Professor  Wilson  has  not  before  been 
printed  in  the  American  edition,  and  it  is  intended  in 
a  subsequent  volume  to  reprint  an  interesting  series  of 
reminiscences  on  the  same  subject  not  hitherto  pub- 
lished either  in  the  Scotch  or  in  the  American  edition 
The  saucy  paper  on  "  Wilhelm  Meister,"  and  the  final 
paper  on  "  Anecdotage  "  also,  both  appear  in  America 
for  the  first  time  in  this  edition.] 


TABLE  OF  COli^'TEl^TS. 

— ♦— 

BlIAKSPKARB 9 

[.IPK  OF  MiLTOS .89 

Milton 118 

Chaklehagnb 135 

Joan  op  Arc 178 

The  Mabquess  Welleslet 216 

Charles  Lamb      ...  ....       232 

Percy  Bvsshe  Shellet 290 

John  Keats 318 

William  (Jodwin 336 

John  Foster 348 

William  Hazlitt 356 

A  Peripatetic  Philosopher      ......       373 

Pr<ifessor  Wilson 392 

Goethe 408 

Goethe  as  reflected  in  his  Novel  of  Wilhelm  Meister  443 

Schiller 484 

John  Paul  Frederick  Richter 508 

Analects  from  Richteb 523 

Anecdotagb .  .  548 

Votes »71 


BIOGRAPHICAL   AND    HISTOUICAL 

ESSAYS. 


SHAKSPEARE.^ 

WiiiLiAM  Shakspeake,  the  protagonist  on  the  great 
urena  of  modern  poetry,  and  the  glory  of  the  human 
intellect,  was  born  at  Stratford-upon-Avon,  in  the 
county  of  "Warwick,  in  the  year  1564,  and  upon  some 
day,  not  precisely  ascertained,  in  the  month  of  April. 
It  is  certain  that  he  was  baptized  on  the  25th ;  and 
from  that  fact,  combined  with  some  shadow  of  a  tradi- 
tion, Malone  has  inferred  that  he  was  born  on  the  23  d. 
There  is  doubtless,  on  the  one  hand,  no  absolute  neces- 
sity deducible  from  law  or  custom,  as  either  operated 
in  those  times,  which  obliges  us  to  adopt  such  a  con- 
clusion ;  for  children  might  be  baptized,  and  were 
baptized,  at  various  distances  from  their  birth  :  yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  23d  is  as  likely  to  have  been  the 
day  as  any  other  ;  and  more  likely  than  any  earlier  day, 
upon  two  arguments.  First,  because  there  was  proba- 
bly a  tradition  floating  in  the  seventeenth  century 
hat  Shakspeare  died  upon  his  birthday  :  now  it  ia 
leyond  a  doubt  that  he  died  upon  the  23d  of  ApriL 
Secondly,  because  it  is  a  reasonable  presumption,  that 
no  parents,  living  in  a  simple  community,  tenderly 
ilive  to  the  pieties  of  household  duty,  and  in  an  age 
1^1  clinging  reverentially  to  the  ceremonial  ordinances 
of  religion,  would  much  delay  *"he  adoption  of  their 
child  into  the  great  family  of  Christ.     Considering  the 


10  SHAKSFEAHE. 

extieme  frailty  of  an  infant's  life  during  its  two  earliest 
years,  to  delay  would  often  be  to  disinherit  the  child  of 
its  Christian  privileges ;  privileges  not  the  less  eloquent 
to  the  feelings  from  being  profoundly  mysterious,  and, 
in  the  English  church,  forced  not  only  upon  the  atten 
tion,  but  even  upon  the  eye  of  the  most  thoughtleee. 
According  to  the  discipline  of  the  English  church,  the 
unbaptized  are  buried  with  '  maimed  rites,'  shorn  of 
their  obsequies,  and  sternly  denied  that  '  sweet  and 
solemn  farewell,'  by  which  otherwise  the  church  ex- 
presses her  final  charity  with  all  men  ;  and  not  only 
BO,  but  they  are  even  locally  separated  and  seques- 
trated. Ground  the  most  hallowed,  and  populous  with 
Christian  burials  of  households, 

*  That  died  in  pe&ce  with  one  another, 
Father,  sister,  son,  and  brother,' 

opens  to  receive  the  vilest  mal'^factor ;  by  which  the 
church  symbolically  expresses  her  maternal  willingness 
to  gather  back  into  her  fold  those  even  of  her  flock 
who  have  strayed  from  her  by  the  most  memorable 
aberrations ;  and  yet,  with  all  this  indulgence,  she 
banishes  to  unhallowed  ground  the  innocent  bodies  of 
the  unbaptized.  To  them  and  to  suicides  she  turns  a 
face  of  wrath.  With  this  gloomy  fact  offered  to  the 
very  external  senses,  it  is  difficult  to  suppose  that  any 
parents  would  risk  their  own  reproaches,  by  putting 
the  fulfilment  of  so  grave  a  duty  on  the  hazard  of  a 
convulsion  fit.  The  case  of  royal  children  is  different ; 
their  baptisms,  it  is  true,  were  often  delayed  for  weeks, 
but  the  household  chaplains  of  the  palace  were  always 
%t  hand,  night  and  day,  to  baptize  them  in  the  very 
agonies  of  death. 2  We  must  presume,  therefore,  thaf 
William  Shakspeare  was  born  on  some  day  very  littlf 


8HAKSF£A.R£.  ll 

Ulterior  to  that  of  his  baptism :  and  the  more  st 
because  the  season  of  the  year  was  lovely  and  genial, 
the  23d  of  April  in  1564,  corresponding  in  fact  witn 
what  we  now  call  the  3d  of  May,  so  that,  whether  thi 
child  was  to  be  carried  abroad,  or  the  clergyman  to  be 
summoned,  no  hindrance  would  arise  from  the  weather. 
One  only  argument  has  sometimes  struck  us  for  sup- 
posing that  the  22d  might  be  the  day,  and  not  the  23d ; 
which  is,  that  Shakspeare's  sole  grand-daughter.  Lady 
Barnard,  was  married  on  the  22d  of  April,  1626,  ten 
years  exactly  from  the  poet's  death ;  and  the  reaso.'i 
for  choosing  this  day  might  have  had  a  reference  tt 
her  illustrious  grandfather's  birthday,  which,  there  is 
good  reason  for  thinking,  would  be  celebrated  as  a 
festival  in  the  family  for  generations.  Still  this  choice 
may  have  been  an  accident,  or  governed  merely  by 
reason  of  convenience.  And,  on  the  whole,  it  is  as 
*pell  perhaps  to  acquiesce  in  the  old  belief,  that  Shak- 
speare  was  born  and  died  on  the  23d  of  April.  We 
cannot  do  ■wrong  if  we  drink  to  his  memory  on  both 
22d  and  23d. 

On  a  first  review  of  the  circumstances,  we  have 
ea&on  to  feel  no  little  perplexity  in  finding  the  mate- 
rials for  a  life  of  this  transcendent  writer  so  meagre 
and  so  few  ;  and  amongst  them  the  larger  part  of 
doubtful  authority.  All  the  energy  of  curiosity  di- 
rected upon  this  subject,  through  a  period  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years,  (for  so  long  it  is  since  Better- 
ton  the  actor  began  to  make  researches,)  has  availed 
&8  little  or  nothing.  Neither  the  local  traditions  of  hia 
provincial  birthplace,  though  sharing  with  London 
through  half  a  century  the  honor  of  his  familiar  pres- 
ence, nor  the  recollections  of  that  brilliant  literary 


ll  SHAKSPEABE. 

curcle  with  whom  he  lived  in  the  metropolis,  have 
yielded  much  more  than  such  an  outline  of  his  history, 
as  is  oftentimes  to  be  gathered  from  the  penurious 
records  of  a  gravestone.  That  he  lived,  and  that  he 
died,  and  that  he  was  *  a  little  lower  than  the  angels ; ' 
—  these  make  up  pretty  nearly  the  amount  of  our  un- 
disputed report.  It  may  be  doubted,  indeed,  whether 
at  this  day  we  are  as  accurately  acquainted  with  the 
life  of  Shakspeare  as  with  that  of  Chaucer,  though 
divided  from  each  other  by  an  interval  of  two  centu- 
ries, and  (what  should  have  been  more  effectual 
towards  oblivion)  by  the  wars  of  the  two  roses.  And 
yet  the  traditional  memory  of  a  rural  and  a  sylvan 
region,  such  as  Warwickshire  at  that  time  was,  is 
usually  exact  as  well  as  tenacious  ;  and,  with  respect 
to  Shakspeare  in  particular,  we  may  presume  it  to 
have  been  full  and  circumstantial  through  the  genera- 
tion succeeding  to  his  own,  not  only  from  the  curiosity, 
and  perhaps  something  of  a  scandalous  interest,  which 
would  pursue  the  motions  of  one  living  so  large  a  part 
of  his  life  at  a  distance  from  his  wife,  but  also  from 
the  final  reverence  and  honor  which  would  settle  upon 
the  memory  of  a  poet  so  preeminently  successful ; 
of  one  who,  in  a  space  of  five  and  twenty  years,  after 
running  a  bright  career  in  the  capital  city  of  his 
native  land,  and  challenging  notice  from  the  throne, 
had  retired  with  an  ample  fortune,  created  by  his 
personal  efforts,  and  by  labors  purely  intellectual. 

How  are  we  to  account,  then,  for  that  deluge,  as  if 
from  Lethe  which  has  swept  away  so  entirely  the  tra- 
ditional memorials  of  one  so  illustrious  ?  Such  is  the 
ftitality  of  error  which  overclouds  every  question  con- 
ttected,  with   Shakspeare,  that  two   of   his   principa. 


dHAKSFEABE.  IS 

critics,  Steevens  and  Malone,  have  endeavored  to  solve 
the  difficulty  by  cutting  it  with  a  falsehood.  They 
deny  in  effect  that  he  was  illustrious  in  the  ceaturj 
Bucceeding  to  his  o\vn,  however  much  he  has  since 
become  so.  We  shall  first  produce  their  statement* 
in  their  own  words,  and  we  shall  then  briefly  review 
them. 

Steevens  delivers  his  opinion  in  the  following  terms : 
*  How  little  Shakspeare  was  once  read,  may  be  under- 
stood from  Tate,  who  in  his  dedication  to  the  altered 
play  of  King  Lear,  speaks  of  the  original  as  an  ob- 
scure piece,  recommended  to  his  notice  by  a  friend : 
and  the  author  of  the  Tatler,  having  occasion  to  quote 
a  few  lines  out  of  Macbeth,  was  content  to  receive  them 
from  Davenant's  alteration  of  that  celebrated  drama, 
in  which  almost  every  original  beauty  is  either  awk- 
wardly disguised  or  arbitrarily  omitted.'  Another 
critic,  who  cites  this  passage  from  Steevens,  pursues 
the  hypothesis  as  follows :  '  In  fifty  years  after  his 
death,  Dryden  mentions  that  he  was  then  become  a 
little  ohsolete.  In  the  beginning  of  the  last  century, 
Lord  Shaftesbury  complains  of  his  rude  unpolished 
style,  and  his  antiquated  phrase  and  wit.  It  is  certain 
that,  for  nearly  a  hundred  years  after  his  death,  partly 
owing  to  the  immediate  revolution  and  rebellion,  and 
oartly  to  the  licentious  taste  encouraged  in  Charles 
.I.'s  time,  and  perhaps  partly  to  the  incorrect  state  of 
his  works,  he  was  almost  entirely  neglected.' 
This  critic  then  goes  on  to  quote  with  approbation  the 
opinion  of  Malone,  —  '  that  if  he  had  been  read,  ad- 
mired, studied,  and  imitai,ed,  in  the  same  degree  as  he 
Ib  now,  the  enthusiasm  of  some  one  or  other  of  his 
admirers  in  the  last  age  would  have  induced  him  to 


14  SHAKSPEABE. 

make  some  inquiries  concerning  the  history  of  hit 
theatrical  career,  and  the  anecdotes  of  his  private 
life.'  After  which  this  enlightened  writer  re-aflEnns 
Bud  clenches  the  judgment  he  has  quoted,  by  saying 
—  ♦  His  admirers,  however,  if  he  had  admirers  in  thai 
age^  possessed  no  portion  of  such  enthusiasm,' 

It  may,  perhaps,  be  an  instructive  lesson  to  yoimg 
readers,  if  we  now  show  them,  by  a  short  sifting  of 
these  confident  dogmatists,  how  easy  it  is  for  a  careless 
or  a  half-read  man  to  circulate  the  most  absolute  false- 
noods  under  the  semblance  of  truth ;  falsehoods  which 
impose  upon  himself  as  much  as  they  do  upon  others. 
We  believe  that  not  one  word  or  illustration  is  uttered 
in  the  sentences  cited  from  these  three  critics,  Avhich  is 
not  virtually  in  the  very  teeth  of  the  truth. 

To  begm  with  Mr.  Nahum  Tate.  This  poor  grub 
of  literature,  if  he  did  really  speak  of  Lear  as  '  an 
obscure  piece,  recommended  to  his  notice  by  a  friend,' 
of  which  we  must  be  allowed  to  doubt,  was  then  utter- 
ing a  conscious  falsehood.  It  happens  that  Lear  was 
one  of  the  few  Shakspearian  dramas  which  had  kept 
the  stage  unaltered.  But  it  is  easy  to  see  a  mercenary 
motive  in  such  an  artifice  as  this.  Mr.  Nahum  Tate  is 
not  of  a  class  of  whom  it  can  be  safe  to  say  that  they 
tre  '  well  known  : '  they  and  their  desperate  tricks  are 
essentially  obscure,  and  good  reason  he  has  to  exult  in 
the  felicity  of  such  obscurity ;  for  else  this  same  vilest 
of  travesties,  Mr,  Nahum's  Lear,  would  consecrate  his 
name  to  everlasting  scorn.  For  himself,  he  belonged 
to  the  age  of  Dryden  rather  than  of  Pope :  he  '  flour- 
Uhsd,'  if  we  can  use  such  a  phrase  of  one  who  wai 
always  withering,  about  the  era  of  tho  Revolution  • 
imd  his  Ijcar,  we  believe,  was  arranged  in  the  yea^ 


SHAKSPEASE.  19 

1682.  But  the  family  tc  which  he  belongs  is  abau- 
dantly  recorded  in  the  Dunciad,  and  his  own  name  will 
be  found  amongst  its  catalogues  of  heroes. 

With  respect  to  the  author  of  the  Tatler,  a  very 
different  explanation  is  requisite.  Steevens  means  the 
reader  to  understand  Addison ;  but  it  does  not  follow 
that  the  particular  paper  in  question  was  from  his  pen. 
Nothing,  however,  could  be  more  natural  than  to 
quote  from  the  common  form  of  the  play  as  then  in 
possession  of  the  stage.  It  was  there,  beyond  a  doubt, 
that  a  fine  gentleman  living  upon  town,  and  not  pro- 
fessing any  deep  scholastic  knowledge  of  literature, 
(a  light  in  which  we  are  always  to  regard  the  writers 
of  the  Spectator,  Guardian,  &c.,)  would  be  likely  to 
have  learned  anything  he  quoted  from  Macbeth. 
This  we  say  generally  of  the  writers  in  those  peri- 
odical papers ;  but,  with  reference  to  Addison  in  par- 
ticular, it  is  time  to  coiTect  the  popular  notion  of  his 
literary  character,  or  at  least  to  mark  it  by  severer 
lines  of  distinction.  It  is  already  pretty  well  known, 
that  Addison  had  no  very  intimate  acquaintance  with 
the  literature  of  his  own  country.  It  is  known,  also, 
that  he  did  not  think  such  an  acquaintance  any  ways 
essential  tc  the  character  of  an  elegant  scholar  and 
litterateur.  Quite  enough  he  found  it,  and  more  than 
enough  for  the  time  he  had  to  spare,  if  he  could  main- 
tein  a  tolerable  familiarity  with  the  foremost  Latin 
poets,  and  a  very  slender  one  indeed  with  the  Grecian. 
How  slender,  we  can  see  in  his  '  Travels.'  Of  modem 
*uthors,  none  as  yet  had  been  published  with  notes, 
eommep Varies,  or  critica..  collations  of  the  text;  and, 
tccordingly,  Addison  looked  upon  all  of  them,  except 
\&o%e  few  who  professed  themselves  followers  in  the 


16  shaksfea.be. 

retinue  and  equipage  of  the  ancients,  as  creatures  of  8 
lower  race.  Boileau,  as  a  mere  imitator  and  propa- 
gator of  Horace,  he  read,  and  probably  little  else 
amongst  the  French  classics.  Hence  it  arose  that  he 
took  upon  himself  to  speak  sneeringly  of  Tasso.  To 
this,  which  was  a  bold  act  for  his  timid  mind,  he  was 
emboldened  by  the  countenance  of  Boileau.  Of  the 
elder  Italian  authors,  such  as  Ariosto,  and,  a  fortiori^ 
Dante,  he  knew  absolutely  nothing.  Passing  to  our 
own  literature,  it  is  certain  that  Addison  was  pro- 
foundly ignorant  of  Chaucer  and  Spenser.  Milton 
only,  —  and  why  ?  simply  because  he  was  a  brilliant 
scholar,  and  stands  like  a  bridge  between  the  Christian 
literature  and  the  Pagan,  —  Addison  had  read  and 
esteemed.  There  was  also  in  the  very  constitution 
of  Milton's  mind,  in  the  majestic  regularity  and 
planetary  solemnity  of  its  epic  movements,  something 
which  he  could  understand  and  appreciate.  As  to  the 
meteoric  and  incalciilable  eccentricities  of  the  dramatic 
mind,  as  it  displayed  itself  in  the  heroic  age  of  our 
drama,  amongst  the  Titans  of  1590— 163C,  they  con- 
founded and  overwhelmed  him. 

In  particular  with  regard  to  Shakspeare,  we  shall 
now  proclaim  a  discovery  which  we  made  some  twenty 
years  ago.  We,  like  others,  from  seeing  frequent 
references  to  Shakspeare  in  the  Spectator,  had  acqui- 
esced in  the  common  belief,  that  although  Addison  waf 
no  doubt  profoundly  unlearned  in  Shakspeare's  lan- 
guage, and  thoroughly  unable  to  do  him  justice,  (and 
this  we  might  well  assume,  since  his  great  rival.  Pope, 
who  had  expressly  studied  Shakspeare,  was,  after  ail, 
•o  memorably  deficient  in  the  appropriate  knowledge," 
—  yet,  that  of  course  he  had  a  vasrue  p-^oular  knowl- 


shakspka.be.  it 

edge  of  the  mighty  poet's  cardinal  dramas.  Accident 
only  led  us  into  a  discovery  of  our  mistake.  Twice 
or  thrice  we  had  observed,  that  if  Shakspeare  were 
quoted,  that  paper  turned  out  not  to  be  Addison's  ;  and 
at  length,  by  express  examination,  we  ascertained  the 
curious  fact,  that  Addison  has  never  in  one  instance 
quoted  or  made  any  reference  to  Shakspeare.  But 
was  this,  as  Steevens  most  disingenuously  pretends,  to 
be  taken  as  an  exponent  of  the  public  feeling  towards 
Shakspeare  ?  Was  Addison's  neglect  representative  of 
a  general  neglect  ?  If  so,  whence  came  Rowe's  edi- 
tion. Pope's,  Theobald's,  Sir  Thomas  Hanmer's,  Bishop 
Warbm-ton's,  all  upon  the  heels  of  one  another  ?  With 
such  facts  staring  him  in  the  face,  how  shameless  must 
be  that  critic  who  could,  in  support  of  such  a  thesis, 
refer  to  '  the  author  of  the  Tatler,'  contemporary  with 
all  these  editors.  The  truth  is,  Addison  was  well 
aware  of  Shakspeare's  hold  on  the  popular  mind  ;  too 
well  aware  of  it.  The  feeble  constitution  of  the  poetic 
faculty,  as  existing  in  himself,  forbade  his  sympathizing 
with  Shakspeare ;  the  proportions  were  too  colossal  for 
his  delicate  vision  ;  and  yet,  as  one  who  sought  popu- 
larity himself,  he  durst  not  shock  what  perhaps  he 
viewed  as  a  national  prejudice.  Those  who  have  hap- 
pened, like  ourselves,  to  see  the  effect  of  passionate 
music  and  '  deep-inwoven  harmonics  '  upon  the  feeling 
of  an  idiot,3  may  conceive  what  we  mean.  Such  music 
does  not  utterly  revolt  the  idiot ;  on  the  contrary,  it 
tas  a  strange  but  a  horrid  fascination  for  him ;  it 
alarms,  irritates,  disturbs,  makes  him  profoundly  un- 
happy ;  and  chiefly  by  unlocking  imperfect  glimpses 
of  thoughts  and  slumbering  instincts,  which  it  is  for 
his  peace  to  have  entirely  obscured,  because  for  him 
2 


16  SUAKSFEABE. 

they  can  be  levealed  only  partially,  and  witli  the  saa 
effect  of  throwing  a  baleful  gleam  upon  his  blighted 
condition.  Do  we  mean,  then,  to  compare  Addison 
with  an  idiot  ?  Not  generally,  by  any  means.  No- 
body can  more  sincerely  admire  him  where  he  was  a 
man  of  real  genius,  viz.,  in  his  delineations  of  character 
and  manners,  or  in  the  exquisite  delicacies  of  his  hu 
mor.  But  assuredly  Addison,  as  a  poet,  was  amongst 
the  sons  of  the  feeble ;  and  between  the  authors  of 
Cato  and  of  King  Lear  there  was  a  gixlf  never  to  be 
bridged  over.^ 

But  Dryden,  we  are  told,  pronounced  Shakspeare 
already  in  his  day  '  a  little  obsolete.'  Here  now  we 
have  wilful,  deliberate  falsehood.  Obsolete,  in  Dry- 
den's  meaning,  does  not  imply  that  he  was  so  with 
regard  to  his  popularity,  (the  question  then  at  issue,) 
but  with  regard  to  his  diction  and  choice  of  words. 
To  cite  Dryden  as  a  \vitness  for  any  purpose  against 
Shakspeare,  —  Dryden,  who  of  all  men  had  the  most 
ransacked  wit  and  exhausted  language  in  celebrating 
the  supremacy  of  Shakspeare's  genius,  does  indeed  re- 
(yiire  as  much  shamelessness  in  feeling  as  mendacity 
in  principle. 

But  then  Lord  Shaftesbury,  who  may  be  taken  as 
half  way  between  Dryden  and  Pope,  (Dryden  died  in 
1700,  Pope  was  then  twelve  years  old,  and  Lord  S. 
wrote  chiefly,  we  believe,  between  1700  and  1710,) 
'  complains,'  it  seems,  '  of  his  rude  unpolished  style, 
and  his  antiquated  phrase  and  wit.'  What  if  he  does  ? 
Let  the  whole  truth  be  told,  and  then  we  shall  see  how 
much  stress  is  to  be  laid  upon  such  a  judgment.  The 
lecond  Lord  Shaftesbury,  the  author  of  the  Character- 
sties,  was  the  grandson  of  that  famous  political  agitator 


8HA.K8F12ABE.  19 

Axe  Cliancellor  Shaftesbury,  who  passed  his  whole  lif 
in  storms  of  his  own  creation.  The  second  Lord 
Shaftesbury  was  a  man  of  crazy  constitution,  queruloi^a 
from  ill  health,  and  had  received  an  eccentric  educa- 
tion from  his  eccentric  grandfather.  He  was  practised 
daily  in  talking  Latin,  to  which  afterwards  he  added  a 
competent  study  of  the  Greek  ;  and  finally  he  became 
unusually  learned  for  his  rank,  but  the  most  absolute 
and  undistinguished  pedant  that  perhaps  literature  has 
to  show.  He  sneers  continually  at  the  regular  built 
academic  pedant ;  but  he  himself,  though  no  academic, 
was  essentially  the  very  impersonation  of  pedantry. 
No  thought  however  beautiful,  no  image  however  mag- 
nificent, could  conciliate  his  praise  as  long  as  it  was 
clothed^Ln  English;  but  present  him  with  the  most 
trivial  commonplaces  in  Greek,  and  he  unaffectedly 
fancied  them  divine  ;  mistaking  the  pleasurable  sense 
of  his  own  power  in  a  difficult  and  rare  accomplish- 
ment for  some  peculiar  force  or  beauty  in  the  passage. 
Such  was  the  outline  of  his  literary  taste.  And  wa» 
it  upon  Shakspeare  only,  or  upon  him  chiefly,  that  he 
lavished  his  pedantry  ?  Far  from  it.  He  attacked 
Milton  with  no  less  fervor ;  he  attacked  Dryden  with  a 
thousand  times  more.  Jeremy  Taylor  he  quoted  only 
to  ridicule ;  and  even  Locke,  the  confidential  friend  of 
his  grandfather,  he  never  alludes  to  without  a  sneer. 
As  to  Shakspeare,  so  far  from  Lord  Shaftesbury's 
censures  arguing  his  deficient  reputation,  the  very  fact 
of  his  noticing  him  at  all  proves  his  enormous  popu- 
larity ;  for  upon  system  he  noticed  those  only  who 
mled  the  public  taste.  The  insipidity  of  his  objections 
lo  Shakspeare  may  be  judged  from  this,  that  he  com- 
ments in  a  spirit  of  absolute  puerility  upon  the  name 


10  SHAKSF£AB£. 

Desdemona,  as  though  intentionally  formed  from  &• 
Greek  word  for  superstition.  In  fact,  he  had  evidently 
read  little  beyond  the  list  of  names  in  Shakspeare ;  yet 
there  is  proof  enough  that  the  irresistible  beauty  of 
what  little  he  had  read  was  too  much  for  all  his  pedan- 
try, and  startled  him  exceedingly ;  for  ever  afterwards 
he  speaks  of  Shakspeare  as  one  who,  with  a  little  aici 
&om  Grecian  sources,  really  had  something  great  and 
promising  about  him.  As  to  modern  authors,  neither 
this  Lord  Shaftesbury  nor  Addison  read  any  thing  for 
the  latter  years  of  their  lives  but  Bayle's  Dictionary. 
And  most  of  the  little  scintillations  of  erudition,  which 
may  be  found  in  the  notes  to  the  Characteristics,  and 
in  the  Essays  of  Addison,  are  derived,  almost  without 
exception,  and  uniformly  without  acknowledgment, 
from  Bayle.5 

Finally,  with  regard  to  the  sweeping  assertion,  that 
•  for  nearly  a  hundred  years  after  his  death  Shakspeare 
was  almost  entirely  neglected,*  we  shall  meet  this  scan- 
dalous falsehood,  by  a  rapid  view  of  his  fortunes  during 
the  century  in  question.  The  tradition  has  always 
been,  that  Shakspeare  was  honored  by  the  especial 
aotice  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  as  well  as  by  that  of  James 
I.  At  one  time  we  were  disposed  to  question  the  truth 
of  this  tradition ;  but  that  was  for  want  of  having  read 
attentively  the  lines  of  Ben  Jonson  to  the  memory  of 
Shakspeare,  those  generous  lines  which  have  so  ab- 
surdly been  taxed  with  faint  praise.  Jonson  couid 
make  no  mistake  on  this  point ;  he,  as  one  of  Shak- 
ipeare's  familiar  companions,  must  have  witnessed  at 
the  very  time,  and  accompanied  with  friendly  sym 
pathy,  every  motion  of  royal  favor  towards  Shakspeare 
Mow  he,  in  wcrds  which  leave  no  room  for  doubt, 
'xdaims. 


8HAK8FKA.be.  ZI 

*  Sweet  swan  of  Avon,  what  a  sight  it  were 
To  see  thee  in  our  waters  yet  appear; 
And  make  those  flights  upon  the  banks  of  Thames, 
TTiai  $0  did  ta'ce  Eliza  and  our  James.* 

These  princes,  then,  were  taken,  were  fascinated, 
with  some  of  Shakspeare's  dramas.  In  Elizabeth  the 
approbation  would  probably  be  sincere.  In  James  we 
«an  readily  suppose  it  to  have  been  assumed ;  for  he 
was  a  pedant  in  a  different  sense  from  Lord  Shaftes- 
bury ;  not  from  undervaluing  modem  poetry,  but  from 
caring  little  or  nothing  for  any  poetry,  although  he 
wrote  about  its  mechanic  rules.  Still  the  royal  impri- 
matur would  be  influential  and  serviceable  no  less 
when  offered  hypocritically  than  in  full  sincerity.  Next 
let  us  consider  at  the  very  moment  of  Shakspeare's 
death,  who  were  the  leaders  of  the  British  youth,  the 
principes  juventtUis,  in  the  two  fields,  equally  impor- 
tant to  a  great  poet's  fame,  of  rank  and  of  genius. 
The  Prince  of  Wales  and  John  Milton ;  the  first  being 
then  about  sixteen  years  old,  the  other  about  eight. 
Now  these  two  great  powers,  as  we  may  call  them, 
these  presiding  stars  over  all  that  was  English  in 
thought  and  action,  were  both  impassioned  admirers  of 
Shakspeare.  Each  of  them  counts  for  many*  thou- 
sands. The  Prince  of  Wales  ^  had  learned  to  appre- 
ciate Shakspeare,  not  originally  from  reading  him,  but 
from  witnessing  the  court  representations  of  his  plays 
at  Whitehall.  Afterwards  we  know  that  he  made 
Shakspeare  his  closet  companion,  for  he  was  re- 
proached with  doing  so  by  Milton.  And  we  know 
also,  from  the  just  criticism  pronounced  upon  the  char- 
tcter  w^  diction  of  Caliban  by  one  of  Charles's  con- 
fidential counsellors,  Lord  Falkland,  that  the  king's 


23  SaAKRF}):A.B£. 

admiration  of  Shakspeare  had  impressed  a  determina- 
tion upon  the  court  reading.  As  to  Milton,  by  double 
prejudices,  puritanical  and  classical,  his  mind  had  bees 
preoccupied  against  the  full  impressions  of  Shakspeare. 
And  we  know  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  keeping  the 
sympathies  of  love  and  admiration  in  a  dormant  state, 
or  state  of  abeyance ;  an  effort  of  self-conquest  realized 
in  more  cases  than  one  by  the  ancient  fathers,  botk 
Greek  and  Latin,  with  regard  to  the  profane  classics. 
Intellectually  they  admired,  and  would  not  belie  theii 
admiration  ;  but  they  did  not  give  their  hearts  cor 
dially,  they  did  not  abandon  themselves  to  their  natural 
impulses.  They  averted  their  eyes  and  weaned  their 
attention  from  the  dazzling  object.  Such,  probably, 
was  Milton's  state  of  feeling  towards  Shakspeare  after 
1642,  when  the  theatres  were  suppressed,  and  the 
fanatical  fervor  in  its  noontide  heat.  Yet  even  then 
he  did  not  belie  his  reverence  intellectually  for  Shak- 
speare :  and  in  his  younger  days  we  know  that  he  had 
spoken  more  enthusiastically  of  Shakspeare,  than  he 
ever  did  again  of  any  uninspired  author.  Not  only 
did  he  address  a  sonnet  to  his  memory,  in  which  he 
declares  that  kings  would  wish  to  die,  if  by  dying  they 
could  obtain  such  a  monimient  in  the  hearts  of  men  ; 
but  he  also  speaks  of  him  in  his  11  Penseroso,  as  the 
tutelary  genius  of  the  English  stage.  In  this  trans- 
mission of  the  torch  {Xttfinaioifoqia)  Dryden  succeeds  to 
Milton  ;  he  was  bom  nearly  thirty  years  later  ;  about 
thirty  years  they  were  contemporaries ;  and  by  thirty 
years,  or  nearly,  Dryden  survived  his  great  leader. 
Dryden,  in  fact,  lived  out  the  seventeenth  century. 
Aiid  we  have  now  arrived  witbin  nine  years  of  the  era, 
when  the  critical  editions  started  in  hot  succession  t« 


SHAKSPEABE.  28 

ane  another.  The  names  we  have  mentioned  were  the 
great  influential  names  of  the  century.  But  of  inferior 
homage  there  was  no  end.  How  came  Betterton  the 
actor,  how  came  Davenant,  how  came  Kowe,  or  Pope, 
by  their  intense  (if  not  always  sound)  admiration  for 
Shakspeare,  unless  they  had  found  it  fuming  upwards 
like  incense  to  the  pagan  deities  in  ancient  times,  from 
altars  erected  at  every  turning  upon  all  the  paths  of 
men? 

But  it  is  objected  that  inferior  dramatists  were  some- 
times preferred  to  Shakspeare ;  and  again  that  vile 
travesties  of  Shakspeare  were  preferred  to  the  authen- 
tic dramas.  As  to  the  first  argument,  let  it  be  remem- 
bered, that  if  the  saints  in  the  chapel  are  always  in  the 
same  honor,  because  there  men  are  simply  discharging 
a  duty,  which  once  due  will  be  due  forever ;  the  saints 
of  the  theatre,  on  the  other  hand,  must  bend  to  the 
local  genius,  and  to  the  very  reasons  for  havmg  a 
theatre  at  all.  Men  go  thither  for  amusement.  This 
is  the  paramount  purpose,  and  even  acknowledged  merit 
or  absolute  superiority  must  give  way  to  it.  Does  a 
man  at  Paris  expect  to  see  Moliere  reproduced  in  pro- 
portion to  his  admitted  precedency  in  the  French 
drama  ?  On  the  contrary,  that  very  precedency  argues 
such  a  familiarization  with  his  works,  that  those  who 
are  in  quest  of  relation  will  reasonably  prefer  any 
recent  drama  to  that  which,  having  lost  all  its  novelty, 
has  lost  much  of  its  excitement.  We  speak  of  ordi- 
nary minds ;  but  in  cases  of  public  entertainments, 
deriving  part  of  their  pow3r  from  scenery  and  stage 
pomp,  novelty  is  for  all  minds  an  essential  conditioB 
of  attraction.  Moreover,  in  some  departments  of  the 
comic,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  when  writing  in  com- 


24  8HAKSPEA.BE. 

bination,  really  had  a  freedom  and  breadth  of  mannei 
which  excels  the  comedy  of  Shakspeare.  As  to  the 
altered  Shakspeare  as  taking  precedency  of  the  genu- 
ine Shakspeare,  no  argument  can  be  so  frivolous.  The 
public  were  never  allowed  a  choice ;  the  great  majority 
of  an  audience  even  now  cannot  be  expected  to  carry 
tihe  real  Shakspeare  in  their  mind,  so  as  to  pursue  a 
comparison  between  that  and  the  alteration.  Their 
comparisons  must  be  exclusively  amongst  what  they 
have  opportunities  of  seeing;  that  is,  between  the 
various  pieces  presented  to  them  by  the  managers  of 
theatres.  Further  than  this,  it  is  impossible  for  them 
to  extend  their  office  of  judging  and  collating;  and  the 
degenerate  taste  which  substituted  the  caprices  of 
Davenant,  the  rants  of  Dryden,  or  the  filth  of  Tate,  for 
the  jewelry  of  Shakspeare,  cannot  with  any  justice  be 
charged  upon  the  public,  not  one  in  a  thousand  of 
whom  was  furnished  with  any  means  of  comparing,  but 
exclusively  upon  those  (viz.,  theatrical  managers,)  who 
had  the  very  amplest.  Yet  even  in  excuse  for  tJum 
much  may  be  said.  The  very  length  of  some  plays 
compelled  them  to  make  alterations.  The  best  of 
Shakspeare's  dramas,  King  Lear,  is  the  least  fitted  for 
representation;  and  even  for  the  vilest  alteration,  it 
ought  in  candor  to  be  considered  that  possession  is  nine 
points  of  the  law.  He  who  would  not  have  intro- 
duced, was  often  obliged  to  retain. 

Finally,  it  is  iirged  that  the  small  number  of  editions 
through  which  Shakspeare  passed  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  furnishes  a  separate  argument,  and  a  conclu- 
rive  one  against  his  popularity.  We  answer,  that, 
considering  the  bulk  of  his  plays  collectively,  the 
editions  were  not  few.     Compared  with  any  knowi 


8HAKSFEABE.  2A 

case,  the  copies  sold  of  Shakspeare  were  quite  as  many 
«8  coiild  be  expected  under  the  circumstances.  Ten 
or  fifteen  times  as  much  consideration  went  to  the 
purchase  of  one  great  folio  like  Shakspeare,  as  would 
attend  the  purchase  of  a  little  volume  like  Waller  or 
Donne.  Without  reviews,  or  newspapers,  or  adver- 
tisements, to  diffuse  the  knowledge  of  books,  the 
progress  of  literature  was  necessarily  slow,  and  its  ex- 
pansion narrow.  But  this  is  a  topic  which  has  already 
been  treated  unfairly,  not  with  regard  to  Shakspeare 
only,  but  to  Milton,  as  well  as  many  others.  The 
truth  is,  we  have  not  facts  enough  to  guide  us  ;  for  the 
number  of  editions  often  tells  nothing  accurately  as  to 
the  number  of  copies.  With  respect  to  Shakspeare 
it  is  certain,  that,  had  his  masterpieces  been  gathered 
into  small  volumes,  Shakspeare  would  have  had  a  most 
extensive  sale.  As  it  was,  there  can  be  no  doubt,  that 
from  his  own  generation,  throughout  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  until  the  eighteenth  began  to  accommo- 
date, not  any  greater  popularity  in  him,  but  a  greater 
taste  for  reading  in  the  public,  his  fame  never  ceased 
to  be  viewed  as  a  national  trophy  of  honor ;  and  the 
most  illustrious  men  of  the  seventeenth  century  were 
no  whit  less  fervent  in  their  admiration  than  those  of 
the  eighteenth  and  the  nineteenth,  either  as  respecte<> 
its  strength  and  sincerity,  or  as  respected  its  open  pro- 
jession.' 

It  is  therefore  a  false  notion,  that  the  general  sym- 
athy  with  the  merits  of  Shakspeare  ever  beat  with  a 
languid  or  intermitting  pulse.  Undoubtedly,  in  times 
when  the  functions  of  critical  journals  and  of  news- 
papers were  not  at  hand  to  diffuse  or  to  strengthen  the 
.mpiessions  which  emanated  from  the  capi*^al,  all  opin- 


20  SHAKSPEA&K. 

ions  must  have  travelled  slowly  nto  the  provinces. 
But  even  then,  whilst  the  perfect  jrgans  of  communi- 
cation were  wanting,  indirect  substitutes  were  supplied 
by  the  necessities  of  the  times,  or  by  the  instincts  of 
political  zeal.  Two  channels  especially  lay  open  be- 
tween the  great  central  organ  of  the  national  mind, 
and  the  remotest  provinces.  Parliaments  were  occa- 
Bionally  sunmioned,  (for  the  judges'  circuits  were  too 
brief  to  produce  much  effect,)  and  during  their  longest 
suspensions,  the  nobility,  with  large  retinues,  continu- 
ally resorted  to  the  court.  But  an  intercourse  more 
constant  and  more  comprehensive  was  maintained 
through  the  agency  of  the  two  universities.  Already, 
in  the  time  of  James  I.,  the  growing  importance  of  the 
gentry,  and  the  consequent  birth  of  a  new  interest  in 
political  4ue8tions,  had  begun  to  express  itself  at 
Oxford,  and  still  more  so  at  Cambridge.  Academic 
persons  stationed  themselves  as  sentinels  at  London, 
for  the  purpose  of  watching  the  court  and  the  course 
of  public  affairs.  These  persons  wrote  letters,  like 
those  of  the  celebrated  Joseph  Mede,  which  we  find  in 
Ellis's  Historical  Collections,  reporting  to  their  fellow- 
collegians  all  the  novelties  of  public  life  as  they  arose, 
or  personally  carried  down  such  reports,  and  thus 
conducted  the  general  feelings  at  the  centre  into  lesser 
centres,  from  which  again  they  were  diffused  into  the 
ten  thousand  parishes  of  England ;  for,  (witn  a  very 
few  exceptions  in  favor  of  poor  benefices,  Welsh  or 
Cumbrian,)  every  parish  priest  must  unavoidably  have 
■pent  his  three  years  at  one  or  other  of  the  English 
universities.  And  by  this  mode  of  diffusion  it  is,  thai 
we  can  explain  the  strength  with  which  Shakspeare' 
;hought8  and  diction  impressed  themselves  from  a  very 


SHAKSFEABE.  9fl 

•arly  period  upon  the  national  literaturt.  and  even 
more  generally  upon  the  national  thinking  and  conver- 
sation.^ 

The  question,  therefore,  revolves  upon  us  in  three- 
fold difficulty  —  How,  having  stepped  thus  prema- 
turely into  this  inheritance  of  fame,  leaping,  as  it 
were,  thus  abruptly  into  the  favor  alike  of  princes  and 
fli©  enemies  of  princes,  had  it  become  possible  that  in 
his  native  place,  (honored  still  more  in  the  final 
testimonies  of  his  preference  when  founding  a  family 
mansion,)  such  a  man's  history,  and  the  personal 
recollections  which  cling  so  afiectionately  to  the  great 
intellectual  potentates  who  have  recommended  them- 
selves by  gracious  manners,  could  so  soon  and  so 
utterly  have  been  obliterated  ? 

Malone,  with  childish  irreflection,  ascribes  the  loss 
of  such  memorials  to  the  want  of  enthusiasm  in  his 
admirers.  Local  researches  into  private  history  had 
not  then  commenced.  Such  a  taste,  often  petty 
enough  in  its  management,  was  the  growth  of  after 
»ges.  Else  how  came  Spenser's  life  and  fortunes  to 
be  so  utterly  overwhelmed  in  oblivion  ?  No  poet  of  a 
high  order  could  be  more  popular. 

The  answer  we  believe  to  be  this :  Twenty-six  years 
after  Shakspeare's  death  commenced  the  great  parlia- 
mentary war.  This  it  was,  and  the  local  feuds  s.riging 
to  divide  family  from  family,  brother  from  brother, 
upon  which  Ave  must  charge  the  extinction  of  traditions 
»nd  memorials,  doubtless  abundant  up  to  that  era. 
The  parliamentary  contest,  it  will  be  said,  did  not  last 
fcbove  three  years ;  the  king's  standard  having  been 
first  raised  at  Nottingham  in  August,  1642,  and  the 
Battle  of  Naseby  (which  termxaateu  the  open  warfare! 


28  8HAKSP£AB£. 

having  been  fought  in  June,  1645.  Or  even  if  we 
extend  its  duration  to  the  surrender  of  the  last  garri- 
son, that  ^var  terminated  in  the  spring  of  1646.  And 
the  brief  explosions  of  insurrection  or  of  Scottish  in- 
vasion, which  occurred  on  subsequent  occasions,  were 
ftll  locally  confined,  and  none  came  near  to  Warwick- 
shire,  except  the  battle  of  Worcester,  more  than  five 
years  after.  This  is  true ;  but  a  short  war  will  do 
much  to  efface  recent  and  merely  personal  memorials. 
And  the  following  circumstances  of  the  war  were  even 
more  important  than  the  general  fact. 

First  of  all,  the  very  mansion  founded  by  Shak- 
speare  became  the  military  head-quarters  for  the  queen, 
in  1644,  when  marching  from  the  eastern  coast  of 
England  to  join  the  king  in  Oxford;  and  one  such 
special  visitation  would  be  likely  to  do  more  serious 
mischief  in  the  way  of  extinction,  than  many  years  of 
general  warfare.  Secondly,  as  a  fact,  perhaps,  equally 
important,  Birmingham,  the  chief  town  of  Warwick- 
shire, and  the  adjacent  district,  the  seat  of  our  hard- 
ware manufactures,  was  the  very  focus  of  disaffectiot 
towards  the  royal  cause.  Not  only,  therefore,  would 
this  whole  region  suff'er  more  from  internal  and  spon- 
taneous agitation,  but  it  would  be  the  more  frequently 
traversed  vindictively  from  without,  and  harassed  by 
flying  parties  from  Oxford,  or  others  of  the  king's 
garrisons.  Thirdly,  even  apart  from  the  political 
aspects  of  Warwickshire,  this  county  happens  to  be 
the  central  one  of  England,  as  regards  the  roads  be- 
tween the  north  and  south ;  and  Birmingham  has  lung 
been  the  great  central  axis,^  in  which  all  the  radii  from 
ihe  four  angles  of  England  proper  meet  and  intersect 
Mere  accident,  therefore,  of  local  position,  much  mor* 


SHAKSFEARE.  29 

rhen  umled  with  that  avowed  inveteracy  of  malignant 
feeling,  which  was  bitter  enough  to  rouse  a  re-action 
of  bitterness  in  the  mind  of  Lord  Clarendon,  would  go 
far  to  account  for  -he  wreck  of  many  memorials  rela- 
ting to  Shakspeare,  as  well  as  for  the  subversion  of 
that  quiet  and  security  for  humble  life,  in  whiA  the 
traditional  memory  finds  its  best  nidus.  Thus  we  ob- 
tain one  solution,  and  perhaps  the  main  one,  of  the 
otherwise  mysterious  oblivion  which  had  swept  away 
all  traces  of  the  mighty  poet,  by  the  time  when  those 
quiet  days  revolved  upon  England,  in  which  again 
the  solitary  agent  of  learned  research  might  roam  in 
security  from  house  to  house,  gleaning  those  personal 
remembrances  which,  even  in  the  fury  of  civil  strife, 
might  long  have  lingered  by  the  chimney  corner.  But 
the  fierce  furnace  of  war  had  probably,  by  its  local 
ravages,  scorched  this  field  of  natural  tradition,  and 
thinned  the  gleaner's  inheritance  by  three  parts  out  of 
four.  This,  we  repeat,  may  be  one  part  of  the  solution 
to  this  difficult  problem. 

And  if  another  is  still  demanded,  possibly  it  may  be 
found  in  the  fact,  hostile  to  the  perfect  consecration  of 
Shakspeare's  memory,  that,  after  all,  he  was  a  player. 
Many  a  coarse-minded  country  gentleman,  or  village 
pastor,  who  would  have  held  his  town  glorified  by  the 
distinction  of  having  sent  forth  a  great  judge  or  an 
eminent  bishop,  might  disdain  to  cherish  the  personal 
recollections  which  surrounded  one  whom  custom 
regarded  as  little  above  a  mountebank,  and  the  illiberal 
AW  as  a  vagabond.  The  same  degrading  appreciation 
attached  both  to  the  actor  in  plays  and  to  their  author. 
The  contemptuous  appellation  of  '  play-book,'  served 
MB  rftAdUy  to  degrade  the  iiighty  volume  which  con- 


30 


SHAKSFEARE. 


tained  Lear  and  Hamlet,  as  that  of  '  play-actor,*  oi 
'  player-man,'  has  always  served  with  the  illiberal  oi 
the  fanatical  to  dishonor  the  persons  of  Roscius  or  of 
Garrick,  of  Talma  or  of  Siddons.  Nobody,  indeed, 
was  better  aware  of  this  than  the  noble-minded  Shak- 
speare ;  and  feelingly  he  has  breathed  forth  in  his 
Konnets  this  conscious  oppression  under  which  he  lay 
of  public  opinion,  unfavorable  by  a  double  title  to  his 
own  pretensions  ;  for,  being  both  dramatic  author  and 
dramatic  performer,  he  found  himself  heir  to  a  two- 
fold opprobrium,  and  at  an  era  of  English  society 
when  the  weight  of  that  opprobrium  was  heaviest.  In 
reality,  there  was  at  this  period  a  collision  of  forces 
acting  in  opposite  directions  upon  the  estimation  of  the 
Btage  and  scenical  art,  and  therefore  of  all  the  ministers 
'jx  its  equipage.  Puritanism  frowned  upon  these  pur- 
suits, as  ruinous  to  public  morals  ;  on  the  other  hand, 
loyalty  could  not  but  tolerate  what  was  patronized  by 
the  sovereign ;  and  it  happened  that  Elizabeth,  James, 
and  Charles  I.,  were  all  alike  lovers  and  promoters  of 
theatrical  amusements,  which  were  indeed  more  indis- 
pensable to  the  relief  of  court  ceremony,  and  the 
monotony  of  aulic  pomp,  than  in  any  other  region  of 
life.  This  royal  support,  and  the  consciousness  that 
any  brilliant  success  in  these  arts  implied  an  unusual 
ihaxe  of  natural  endowments,  did  something  in  mitiga- 
tion of  a  scorn  which  must  else  have  been  intolerable 
to  all  generous  natures. 

But  whattjver  prejudice  might  thus  operate  against 
ixe  perfect  sanctity  of  Shakspeare's  posthumous  repu- 
ation,  it  is  certain  that  the  splendor  of  his  worldly 
lucccsa  must  have  done  much  to  obliterate  that  effect ; 
lis  admirable  colloquial  talents  a  good  deal,  and  hit 


8HAK8FEABE.  SI 

gracious  affability  still  more.  The  wonder,  therefore, 
will  still  remain,  that  Betterton,  in  less  than  a  century 
from  his  death,  should  have  been  able  to  glean  so 
little.  And  for  the  solution  of  this  wonder,  we  must 
throw  ourselves  chiefly  upon  the  explanations  we  have 
made  as  to  the  parliamentary  war,  and  the  local 
ravages  of  its  progress  in  the  very  district,  of  the 
very  town,  and  the  very  house. 

If  further  arguments  are  still  wanted  to  explain  this 
mysterious  abolition,  we  may  refer  the  reader  to  the 
following  succession  of  disastrous  events,  by  which  it 
should  seem  that  a  perfect  malice  of  misfortune  pur- 
sued the  vestiges  of  the  mighty  poet's  steps.  In  1613, 
the  Globe  theatre,  with  which  he  had  been  so  long 
connected,  was  burned  to  the  ground.  Soon  after- 
wards a  great  fire  occurred  in  Stratford ;  and  next, 
(without  counting  upon  the  fire  of  London ;  just  fifty 
years  after  his  death,  which,  howler,  would  consume 
many  an  important  record  from  periods  far  more  re- 
mote,) the  house  of  Ben  Jonson,  in  which  probably,  as 
Mr.  Campbell  suggests,  might  be  parts  of  his  corres- 
pondence, was  also  burned.  Finally,  there  was  an  old 
tradition  that  Lady  Barnard,  the  sole  grand-daughter 
of  Shakspeare,  had  carried  off  many  of  his  papers  frovi 
Stratford,  and  these  papers  have  never  since  been 
traced. 

In  many  of  the  elder  lives  it  has  been  asserted,  th»» 
John  Shakspeare,  the  father  of  the  poet,  was  a  butcher 
and  in  others  that  he  was  a  woolstapler  It  is  now 
vettled  beyond  dispute  that  he  was  a  glover.  This  wm 
his  professed  occupation  in  Stratford,  though  it  is  cer- 
tain that,  with  this  leading  trade,  from  which  he  took 
tia  denomination,  he  combined  some  collateral  p'-ar- 


)2  SHAKSPEAKE. 

suits  ;  and  it  is  possible  enough  that,  as  openiiigfl 
offered,  he  may  have  meddled  with  many.  In  that 
age,  in  a  provincial  town,  nothing  like  the  exquisite 
subdivision  of  labor  was  attempted  which  we  now  see 
realized  in  the  great  cities  of  Christendom.  And  one 
trade  is  often  found  to  play  into  another  with  so  much 
reciprocal  advantage,  that  even  in  our  own  days  wff 
do  not  much  wonder  at  an  enterprising  man,  in  coun- 
try places,  who  combines  several  in  his  own  person. 
Accordingly,  John  Shakspeare  is  known  to  have  united 
with  his  town  calling  the  rural  and  miscellaneous  oc- 
cupations of  a  farmer. 

Meantime  his  avowed  business  stood  upon  a  very 
different  footing  from  the  same  trade  as  it  is  exercised 
in  modern  times.  Gloves  were  in  that  age  an  article 
of  di-ess  more  costly  by  mucn,  and  more  elaborately 
decorated,  than  in  our  own.  They  were  a  customary 
present  from  some  cities  to  the  judges  of  assize,  and 
to  other  official  persons  ;  a  custom  of  ancient  standing, 
and  in  some  places,  we  believe,  still  subsisting  ;  and  in 
such  cases  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  gloves 
must  originally  have  been  more  valuable  than  the 
trivial  modern  article  of  the  same  name.  So  also, 
perhaps,  in  their  origin,  of  the  gloves  given  at  funerals. 
\n  reality,  whenever  the  simplicity  of  an  age  makes  it 
difficult  to  renew  the  parts  of  a  wardrobe,  except  in 
capital  towns  of  difficult  access,  prudence  suggests  that 
such  wares  should  be  manufactured  of  more  durable 
materials  ;  and;  being  so,  they  become  obviously  sus- 
ceptible of  more  lavish  ornament.  But  it  will  not 
follow,  from  this  essential  difference  in  the  gloves  of 
Shakspeare's  age,  that  the  glover's  occupation  wai 
eaore  lucrative.     Doubtless  he  sold  more  costly  glovea 


SHAKSPEABE.  38 

ind  upon  each  pair  had  a  larger  profit,  but  for  that 
very  reason  he  sold  fewer.  Two  or  three  gentlemen 
•  of  worship  '  in  the  neighborhood  might  occasionally 
require  a  pair  of  gloves,  but  it  is  very  doubtful  whether 
any  inhabitant  of  Stratford  would  ever  call  for  so  mere 
a  luxury. 

The  practical  result,  at  all  events,  of  John  Shak 
speare's  various  pursuits,  does  not  appear  permanentl) 
to  have  met  the  demands  of  his  establishment,  and 
in  his  maturer  years  there  are  indications  still  surviv- 
ing that  he  wjis  under  a  cloud  of  embarrassment.  He 
certainly  lost  at  one  time  his  social  position  in  the  town 
of  Stratford ;  but  there  is  a  strong  presumption,  in 
our  construction  of  the  case,  that  he  finally  retrieved 
it ;  and  for  this  retrieval  of  a  station,  which  he  had 
forfeited  by  personal  misfortunes  or  neglect,  he  was 
altogether  indebted  to  the  filial  piety  of  his  immortal 
Bon. 

Meantime  the  earlier  years  of  the  elder  Shakspeare 
wore  the  aspect  of  rising  prosperity,  however  unsound 
might  be  the  basis  on  which  it  rested.  There  can  be 
little  doubt  that  William  Shakspeare,  from  his  birth  up 
to  his  tenth  or  perhaps  his  eleventh  year,  lived  in  care- 
less plenty,  and  saw  nothing  in  his  father's  house  but 
that  style  of  liberal  housekeeping,  which  has  ever  dis- 
tinguished the  upper  yeomanry  and  the  rui-al  gentry 
jf  England.  Probable  enough  it  is,  that  the  resources 
for  meeting  this  liberality  were  not  strictly  commen- 
•urate  with  the  family  income,  but  were  sometimes 
illowed  to  entrench,  by  means  of  loans  or  mortgages, 
upon  capital  funds.  The  stress  upon  the  family  finaa- 
"^s  was  perhaps  al  times  severe ;  tnd  that  it  was  borne 
%t  all,  must  be  Ijaputed  to  the  large  and  even  splendid 
3 


%4  SHAKSFEAJLE 

porllun  which  John    Shakspeare    received    with   hia 
wife. 

This  lady,  for  such  she  really  was  in  an  eminent 
sense,  by  birth  as  well  as  by  connections,  bore  the 
beautiful  name  of  Mary  Arden,  a  name  derived  from 
the  ancient  forest  district  1°  of  the  country ;  and  doubt- 
less she  merits  a  more  elaborate  notice  than  our  slender 
materials  will  furnish.  To  have  been  the  mother  of 
Shakspeare,  —  how  august  a  title  to  the  reverence  of 
infinite  generations  and  of  centuries  beyond  the  vision 
of  prophecy.  A  plausible  hypothesis  has  been  started 
in  modern  times,  that  the  facial  structure,  and  that  the 
intellectual  conformation,  may  be  deduced  more  fre- 
quently from  the  corresponding  characteristics  in  the 
mother  than  in  the  father.  It  is  certain  that  no  very 
^eat  man  has  ever  existed,  but  that  his  greatness  has 
been  rehearsed  and  predicted  in  one  or  other  of  his 
parents.  And  it  cannot  be  denied  that  in  the  most 
eminent  men,  where  we  have  had  the  means  of  pursu- 
ing the  investigation,  the  mother  has  more  frequently 
been  repeated  and  reproduced  than  the  father.  We 
nave  known  cases  where  the  mother  has  furnished  all 
•"he  intellect,  and  the  father  all  the  moral  sensibility, 
upon  which  assumption,  the  wonder  ceases  that  Cicero, 
Lord  Chesterfield,  and  other  brilliant  men,  who  took 
the  utmost  pains  with  their  sons,  should  have  failed  so 
conspicuously ;  for  possibly  the  mothers  had  been 
women  of  excessive  and  even  exemplary  stupidity. 
In  the  Ccise  of  Shakspeare,  each  parent,  if  we  had  any 
means  of  recovering  their  characteristics,  could  not  fail 
to  fvrnish  a  etudy  of  the  most  profound  interest ;  and 
witn  regard  to  his  mother  in  particular,  if  the  moden: 
typo  thesis  be  true,  and  if  we  are  indeed  to  deduct 


SUAKSFEABE.  85 

(rem  her  the  stupendous  intellect  of  her  son,  in  that 
case  she  must  have  been  a  benefactress  to  her  hu** 
band's  family,  beyond  the  promises  of  fairy  land  or  the 
dreams  of  romance ;  for  it  is  certain  that  to  her  chiefly 
this  family  was  also  indebted  for  their  worldly  comfort. 
Mary  Arden  was  the  youngest  daughter  and  the 
heiress  of  Robert  Arden,  of  Wilmecote,  Esq.,  in  the 
county  of  Warwick.  The  family  of  Arden  was  even 
then  of  great  antiquity.  About  one  century  and  a 
quarter  before  the  birth  of  William  Shakspeare,  a 
person  bearing  the  same  name  as  his  maternal  grand- 
father had  been  returned  by  the  commissioners  in  their 
list  of  the  Warwickshire  gentry ;  he  was  there  styled 
Robert  Arden,  Esq.,  of  Bromich.  This  was  in  1433, 
or  the  12th  year  of  Henry  VI.  In  Henry  VII. 's  reign, 
the  Arden's  received  a  grant  of  lands  from  the  crown ; 
and  in  1568,  four  years  after  the  birth  of  WUliam 
Shakspeare,  Edward  Arden,  of  the  same  family,  was 
sheriff  of  the  county.  Mary  Arden  was,  therefore,  a 
young  lady  of  excellent  descent  and  connections,  and 
an  heii'ess  of  considerable  wealth.  She  brought  to  her 
husband,  as  her  marriage  portion,  the  landed  estate  of 
Asbies,  which,  upon  any  just  valuation,  must  be  con- 
sidered as  a  handsome  dowry  for  a  woman  of  her 
station.  As  this  point  has  been  contested,  and  as  it 
goes  a  great  way  towards  determining  the  exact  social 
poi-itioR.  of  the  poet's  parents,  let  us  be  excused  foi 
»ift  ng  it  a  little  more  narrowly  than  might  else  seem 
*v^ai  ranted  by  the  proportions  of  our  present  life. 
Every  question  which  it  can  be  reasonable  to  raise  at 
\11,  it  must  be  reasonable  to  treat  with  at  least  so  much 
of  minute  research,  as  may  justify  the  concluaioai 
which  it  is  made  to  support. 


S6  SHAKSPEARE. 

The  estate  of  Asbies  contained  fifty  acres  of  arable 
land,  six  of  meadow,  and  a  right  of  commonage. 
What  may  we  assume  to  have  been  the  value  of  its 
fee-simple  ?  Malone,  who  allows  the  total  fortune  of 
Mary  Arden  to  have  been  £110  13s.  4d.,  is  sure  that 
the  value  of  Asbies  could  not  have  been  more  than  one 
hundred  pounds.  But  why  ?  Because,  says  he,  the 
'  average  '  rent  of  land  at  that  time  was  no  more  than 
three  shillings  per  acre.  This  we  deny  ;  but  upon 
that  assumption,  the  total  yearly  rent  of  fifty-six  acres 
would  be  exactly  eight  guineas.  ^^  And  therefore,  in 
assigning  the  value  of  Asbies  at  one  hundred  pounds, 
it  appears  that  Malone  must  have  estimated  the  land 
at  no  more  than  twelve  years'  purchase,  which  would 
carry  the  value  to  £100  16s.  '  Even  at  this  estimate,' 
as  the  latest  annotator  '2  on  this  subject  justly  ob- 
serves, '  Mary  Arden's  portion  was  a  larger  one  than 
was  usually  given  to  a  landed  gentleman's  daughter.' 
But  this  writer  objects  to  Malone' s  principle  of  valua- 
tion. '  We  find,'  says  he,  '  that  John  Shakspeare  also 
farmed  the  meadow  of  Tugton,  containing  sixteen  acres, 
at  the  i-ate  of  eleven  shillings  per  acre.  Now  what 
proof  has  Mr.  Malone  adduced,  that  the  acres  of 
Asbies  were  not  as  valuable  as  those  of  Tugton  ? 
And  if  they  were  so,  the  former  estate  must  have  been 
worth  between  three  and  four  hundred  pounds.'  In 
the  main  drift  of  his  objections  we  concur  with  Mr. 
Campbell.  But  as  they  are  liable  to  some  criticism, 
let  us  clear  the  ground  of  all  plausible  cavils,  and  then 
■ee  what  will  be  the  result.  Malone,  had  he  been 
»!ive,  would  probably  have  answered  that  Tugton  wa« 
t  ferm  especially  privileged  by  nature  ;  and  that  L 
iny  man  contended  for  so   unusual  a  rent  as  elevei 


8HAKSFEARE.  37 

Bhillmgs  an  acre  for  land  not  known  to  him,  the  omu 
probandi  would  lie  upon  him.  Be  it  so  ;  eleven  shil- 
lings is  certainly  above  the  ordinary  level  of  rent,  but 
three  shillings  is  below  it.  We  contend,  that  foi 
tolerably  good  land,  situated  advantageously,  that  is, 
with  a  ready  access  to  good  markets  and  good  fairs, 
such  as  those  of  Coventry,  Birmingham,  Gloucester, 
Worcester,  Shrewsbury,  &c.,  one  noble  might  be 
assumed  as  the  annual  rent ;  and  that  in  such  situa- 
tions twenty  years'  purchase  was  not  a  valuation,  even 
in  Elizabeth's  reign,  very  unusual.  Let  us,  however, 
assume  the  rent  at  only  five  shillings,  and  land  at 
sixteen  years'  purchase.  Upon  this  basis,  the  tent 
woidd  be  £14,  and  the  value  of  the  fee-simple  £224. 
Now,  if  it  were  required  to  equate  that  sum  with  its 
present  value,  a  very  operose  ^^  calculation  might  be 
requisite.  But  contenting  ourselves  with  the  gross 
method  of  making  such  equations  between  1560  and 
the  current  century,  that  is,  multiplying  by  five,  we 
shall  find  the  capital  value  of  the  estate  to  be  eleven 
hundred  and  twenty  pounds,  whilst  the  annual  rent 
would  be  exactly  seventy.  But  if  the  estate  had  been 
sold,  and  the  purchase-money  lent  upon  mortgage, 
(the  only  safe  mode  of  investing  money  at  that  time,) 
the  annual  interest  would  have  reached  £28,  equal  to 
€140  of  modern  money;  for  mortgages  in  Elizabeth's 
uge  readily  produced  ten  per  cent. 

A  woman  who  should  bring  at  this  day  an  annual 
income  of  £140  to  a  provincial  tradesman,  living  in  a 
lort  of  rtis  in  urhe,  according  to  the  simple  fashions  of 
rustic  life,  would  assuredly  be  considered  as  an  excel- 
ent  match.  And  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  Mary 
Arden's  dowry  it  was  which,  for  some  ten  or  a  dozen 


$8  SHAKSPEAB£. 

fears  succeeding  to  his  marriage,  raised  Iter  husband 
to  so  much  social  consideration  in  Stratford.  In  1660 
John  Shakspeare  is  supposed  to  have  first  settled  in 
Stratford,  having  migrated  from  some  other  part  of 
Warwickshire.  In  1557  he  married  Mary  Arden; 
in  1565,  the  year  subsequent  to  the  birth  of  his  son 
William,  his  third  child,  he  was  elected  coe  of  the 
aldermen;  and  in  the  year  1568  he  became  first  mag- 
istrate of  the  town,  by  the  title  of  high  bailiff".  This 
year  we  may  assume  to  have  been  that  in  which  the 
prosperity  of  this  family  reached  its  zenith ;  for  in  this 
year  it  wjis,  over  and  above  the  presumptions  furnished 
by  his  civic  honors,  that  he  obtained  a  grant  of  arms 
from  Clarencieux  of  the  Heralds'  College.  On  this 
occasion  he  declared  himself  worth  five  hundred 
pounds  derived  from  his  ancestors.  And  we  really 
cannot  understand  the  right  by  which  critics,  living 
nearly  three  centuries  from  his  time,  undertake  to 
know  his  affairs  better  than  himself,  and  to  tax  him 
with  either  inaccuracy  or  fals'^hood.  No  man  would 
be  at  leisure  to  court  heraldic  honors,  when  he  knew 
himself  to  be  embarrassed,  or  apprehended  that  he 
soon  might  be  so.  A  man  whose  anxieties  had  been 
fixed  at  all  upon  his  daily  livelihood  would,  by  this 
ehase  after  the  aerial  honors  of  heraldry,  have  made 
himself  a  butt  for  ridicule,  such  as  no  fortitude  could 
enable  him  to  sustain. 

In  1568,  therefore,  when  his  son  William  would  be 
moving  through  his  fifth  year,  John  Shakspeare,  (now 
bonored  by  the  designation  of  Master,)  would  be  found 
%t  times  in  the  society  of  the  neighboring  gentry. 
Ten  years  in  advance  of  this  period  he  was  already  in 
iiificulties.    But  there  is  no  proof  that  these  difficultie 


8HAKSF£ARE.  M 

Bad  tbcn  reached  a  point  of  degradation,  or  of  memo- 
rable distress.  The  sole  positive  indications  of  hii 
decaying  condition  are,  that  in  1578  he  received  an 
exemption  from  the  small  weekly  assessment  levied 
upon  the  aldermen  of  Stratford  for  the  relief  of  the 
poor ;  and  that  in  the  following  year,  1579,  he  is  found 
enrolled  amongst  the  defaulters  in  the  payment  of 
taxes.  The  latter  fact  undoubtedly  goes  to  prove  that, 
like  every  man  who  is  falling  back  in  the  world,  he 
was  occasionally  in  arrears.  Paying  taxes  is  not  like 
the  honors  awarded  or  the  possessions  regulated  by 
the  Clarencieux ;  no  man  is  ambitious  of  precedency 
there  ;  and  if  a  laggard  pace  in  that  duty  is  to  be 
received  as  evidence  of  pauperism,  nine  tenths  of  the 
English  people  might  occasionally  be  classed  as  pau- 
pers. With  respect  to  his  liberation  from  the  weekly 
assessment,  that  may  bear  a  construction  different  from 
the  one  which  it  has  received.  This  payment,  which 
could  never  have  been  regarded  as  a  burden,  not 
amounting  to  five  pounds  annually  of  our  present 
money,  may  have  been  held  up  as  an  exponent  of 
wealth  and  consideration ;  and  John  Shakspeare  may 
have  been  required  to  resign  it  as  an  honorable  distinc- 
tion, not  suitable  to  the  circumstances  of  an  embar- 
rassed man.  Finally,  the  fact  of  his  being  indebted 
to  Robert  Sadler,  a  baker,  in  the  sum  of  five  pounds, 
and  his  being  under  the  necessity  of  bringing  a  friend 
as  security  for  the  payment,  proves  nothing  at  all. 
There  is  not  a  town  in  Europe,  in  which  opulent  men 
cannot  be  found  that  are  backward  in  the  payment 
of  their  debts.  And  the  probability  is,  that  Master 
Badler  acted  like  most  people  who,  when  they  sup 
908e  a  man  tc  be  going  down  in  the  world,  feel  their 


10 


SHAKSPKARE. 


respect  for  him  sensibly  decaying,  and  think  it  wise  to 
trample  him  under  foot,  provided  only  in  that  act  of 
trampling  they  can  squeeze  out  of  him  their  own  indi- 
vidual debt.  Like  that  terrific  chorus  in  Spohr's 
oratorio  of  St.  Paul,  '  Stone  him  to  death'  is  the  cry 
of  the  selfish  and  the  illiberal  amongst  creditors,  alike 
towards  the  just  and  the  unjust  amongst  debtors. 

It  was  the  wise  and  beautiful  prayer  of  Agar,  '  Give 
me  neither  poverty  nor  riches;'  and,  doubtless,  for 
quiet,  for  peace,  and  the  latentis  semita  vitte,  that  is 
the  happiest  dispensation.  But,  perhaps,  with  a  view 
to  a  school  of  discipline  and  of  moral  fortitude,  it  might 
be  a  more  salutary  prayer,  '  Give  me  riches  and  pov- 
erty, and  afterwards  neither.'  For  the  transitorial 
state  between  riches  and  poverty  will  teach  a  lesson 
both  as  to  the  baseness  and  the  goodness  of  human 
nature,  and  will  impress  that  lesson  with  a  searching 
force,  such  as  no  borrowed  experience  ever  can  ap- 
proach. Most  probable  it  is  that  Shakspeare  drew 
Bome  of  his  powerful  scenes  in  the  Timon  of  Athens, 
those  which  exhibit  the  vileness  of  ingratitude  and  the 
impassioned  frenzy  of  misanthropy,  from  his  personal 
recollections  connected  with  the  case  of  his  own  father. 
Possibly,  though  a  cloud  of  two  hundred  and  seventy 
years  now  veils  it,  this  very  Master  Sadler,  who  was 
BO  argent  for  his  five  pounds,  and  who  so  little  appre- 
hended that  he  should  be  called  over  the  coals  for  it  in 
the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  may  have  sate  for  the 
portrait  of  that  Lucullus  who  says  of  Timon  : 

'  Alas,  good  lord !  a  noble  gentlemao 
tis,  if  he  would  not  keep  so  good  a  house.  Many  a  time  &ni 
•hen  I  have  dined  with  him,  and  to'.  1  him  on't;  and  come  agaiv 
«  sapper  to  him,  of  purpose  to  have  him  spend  less ;  and  y«t  ht 


SHAKSFEARE.  41 

iroold  embrace  no  counsel,  take  no  warning  bj  my  coming 
Every  man  has  his  fault,  and  honesty  is  his;  I  have  told  bin 
jn't;  but  could  never  get  him  from  it.' 

For  certain  years,  perhaps,  John  Shakspeare  moved 
Dn  in  darkness  and  sorrow  : 

♦  His  familiars  from  his  buried  fortunes 
Slunk  all  away ;  left  their  false  vows  with  him. 
Like  empty  purses  pick'd;  and  his  poor  self, 
A  dedicated  beggar  to  the  air, 
With  his  disease  of  all  shunn'd  poverty, 
Walk'd,  like  contempt,  alone.' 

We,  however,  at  this  day,  are  chiefly  interested  in 
the  case  as  it  bears  upon  the  education  and  youthful 
happiness  of  the  poet.  Now  if  we  suppose  that  from 
1568,  the  high  noon  of  the  family  prosperity,  to  1578, 
the  first  year  of  their  mature  embarrassments,  one  half 
the  interval  was  passed  in  stationary  sunshine,  and  the 
latter  half  in  the  gradual  twilight  of  declension,  it  Avill 
follow  that  the  young  William  had  completed  his  tenth 
year  before  he  heard  the  first  signals  of  distress  ;  and 
for  80  long  a  period  his  education  would  probably  be 
•onducted  on  as  liberal  a  scale  as  the  resources  of 
Stratford  would  allow.  Through  this  earliest  section 
of  his  life  he  would  undoubtedly  rank  as  a  gentleman's 
son,  possibly  as  the  leader  of  his  class,  in  Stratford. 
But  what  rank  he  held  through  the  next  ten  years,  or, 
more  generally,  what  was  the  standing  in  society  of 
Shakspeare  until  he  had  created  a  new  station  for 
Himself  by  his  own  exertions  in  the  metropolis,  is  a 
|uestion  yet  unsettled,  but  which  has  been  debated  as 
iceenly  as  if  it  had  some  great  dependencies.  Upon 
Inis  we  shall  observe,  that  could  we  by  possibility  be 
ulled  to  settle  beforehand  what  rank  were  best  foi 


12  SH4KSPEARE. 

favoring  the  development  of  intellectual  powers,  the 
question  might  wear  a  face  of  deep  practical  impor- 
tance ;  but  when  the  question  is  simply  as  to  a  matter 
of  fact,  what  was  the  rank  held  by  a  man  whose  intel- 
lectual development  has  long  ago  been  completed,  thii 
becomes  a  mere  question  of  curiosity.  The  tree  has 
&llen  ;  it  is  confessedly  the  noblest  of  all  the  forest ; 
and  we  must  therefore  conclude  that  the  soil  in  which 
it  flourished  was  either  the  best  possible,  or,  if  not  so, 
that  anything  bad  in  its  properties  had  been  disarmed 
and  neutralized  by  the  vital  forces  of  the  plant,  or  by 
the  benignity  of  nature.  If  any  future  Shakspeare 
were  likely  to  arise,  it  might  be  a  problem  of  great 
interest  to  agitate,  whether  the  condition  of  a  poor  man 
or  of  a  gentleman  were  best  fitted  to  nurse  and  stimu- 
late his  faculties.  But  for  the  actual  Shakspeare,  since 
what  he  was  he  was,  and  since  nothing  greater  can  be 
imagined,  it  is  now  become  a  matter  of  little  moment 
whether  his  course  lay  for  fifteen  or  twenty  years 
through  the  humilities  of  absolute  poverty,  or  through 
the  chequered  paths  of  gentry  Ipng  in  the  shade. 
Whatever  was,  must,  in  this  case  at  least,  have  been 
the  best,  since  it  terminated  in  producing  Shakspeare ; 
and  thus  far  we  must  all  be  optimists. 

Yet  still,  it  will  be  urged,  the  curiosity  is  not  illib- 
eral which  would  seek  to  ascertain  the  precise  career 
through  which  Shakspeare  ran.  This  we  readily  con- 
••^de ;  and  we  are  anxious  ourselves  to  contribute  any- 
thing in  our  power  to  the  settlement  of  a  point  so 
obscure.  What  we  have  wished  to  protest  against,  if 
ttie  spirit  of  partisanship  in  which  this  question  has  toe 
generally  been  discussed.  For,  whilst  some  with  a 
foolish  affectation  of  plebeian  sympathies  overwhelm  us 


8HAKSPEARE.  4S 

with  the  iiisipid  commonplaces  about  birth  and  ancient 
descent,  as  honors  containing  nothing  meritorious,  and 
rush  eagerly  into  an  ostentatious  exhibition  of  all  the 
circumstances  which  favor  the  notion  of  a  humble 
station  and  humble  connections  ;  others,  with  equal  for- 
getfulness  of  true  dignity,  plead  with  the  intemperance 
and  partiality  of  a  legal  advocate  for  the  pretensioiift 
of  Shakspeare  to  the  hereditary  rank  of  gentleman. 
Both  parties  violate  the  majesty  of  the  subject.  "When 
we  are  seeking  for  the  sources  of  the  Euphrates  or  the 
St.  Lavnrence,  we  look  for  no  proportions  to  the  mighty 
volume  of  waters  in  that  psirticular  summit  amongst 
the  chain  of  mountains  which  embosoms  its  earliest 
fountains,  nor  are  we  shocked  at  the  obscurity  of  these 
fountains.  Pursuing  the  career  of  Mahommed,  or  of 
any  man  who  has  memorably  impressed  his  own  mind 
or  agency  upon  the  revolutions  of  mankind,  we  feel 
solicitude  about  the  circumstances  which  might  sxir- 
round  his  cradle  to  be  altogether  unseasonable  and 
impertinent.  Whether  he  were  born  in  a  hovel  or  a 
palace,  whether  he  passed  his  infancy  in  squalid  pov- 
erty, or  hedged  around  by  the  glittering  spears  of  body- 
guards, as  mere  questions  of  fact  may  be  interesting ; 
but,  in  the  light  of  either  accessories  or  counter-agen- 
cies to  the  native  majesty  of  the  subject,  are  trivial  and 
below  all  philosophic  valuation.  So  with  regard  to  the 
creator  of  Lear  and  Hamlet,  of  Othello  and  Macbeth  ; 
to  him  from  whose  golden  urns  the  nations  beyond  the 
fer  Atlantic,  the  multitude  of  the  isles,  and  the  genera- 
tions unborn  in  Australian  climes,  even  to  the  realms  of 
""he  rising  sun  (the  avarolai  i^fXtoto,')  must  in  every  age 
iiKVi  perennial  stream?  of  intellectuax  life,  we  feel 
di&t  the  little  accidents  of  birth  and  social  conditio 


44  SHAKSPEABE. 

we  80  unspeakably  below  the  grandeur  of  the  theme 
we  so  irrelevant  and  disproportioned  to  the  real  interest 
at  issue,  so  incommensurable  with  any  of  its  relations, 
that  a  biographer  of  Shakspeare  at  once  denouncej 
himself  as  below  his  subject,  if  he  can  entertain  such  8 
question  as  seriously  affecting  the  glory  of  the  poet 
In  some  legends  of  saints,  we  find  that  they  were  born 
with  a  lambent  circle  or  golden  aureola  about  their 
Deads.  This  angelic  coronet  shed  light  alike  upon  the 
chambers  of  a  cottage  or  a  palace,  upon  the  gloomy 
limits  of  a  dungeon,  or  the  vast  expansion  of  a 
cathedral ;  but  the  cottage,  the  palace,  the  dungeon, 
the  cathedral,  were  all  equally  incapable  of  adding  one 
ray  of  color  or  one  pencil  of  light  to  the  supernatural 
halo. 

Having,  therefore,  thus  pointedly  guarded  ourselves 
from  misconstruction,  and  consenting  to  entertain  the 
question  as  one  in  which  we,  the  worshippers  oi 
Shakspeare,  have  an  interest  of  curiosity,  but  in 
which  he,  the  object  of  our  worship,  has  no  interest  of 
glory,  we  proceed  to  state  what  appears  to  us  the  re- 
sult of  the  scanty  facts  surviving  when  collated  witl 
each  other. 

By  his  mother's  side,  Shakspeare  was  an  authentic 
gentleman.  By  his  father's  he  would  have  stood  in  p 
more  dubious  position :  but  the  effect  of  municipal 
honors  to  raise  and  illustrate  an  equivocal  rank,  has 
always  been  acknowledged  under  the  popular  tenden- 
cies cf  o\ir  English  political  system.  From  the  sort  oi 
lead,  therefore,  which  John  Shakspeare  took  at  one 
time  amongst  his  fellow-townsmen,  and  from  his  rank 
of  first  magistrate,  we  may  presume  that,  about  the 
rear  1568,  he  had  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  the 


8HAKSF£AB£.  40 

Btratford  community.  Afterwards  he  continued  for 
lome  years  to  descend  from  this  altitude ;  and  the 
question  is,  at  what  point  this  gradual  degradation  may 
De  supposed  to  have  settled.  Now  we  shall  avow  it  as 
our  opinion,  that  the  composition  of  society  in  Stratford 
was  such  that,  even  had  the  ShaJcspeare  family  main- 
tained their  superiority,  the  main  body  of  their  daily 
associates  must  still  have  been  found  amongst  persons 
below  the  rank  of  gentry.  The  poet  must  inevitably 
have  mixed  chiefly  with  mechanics  and  humble  trades- 
men, for  such  people  composed  perhaps  the  total 
community.  But  had  there  even  been  a  gentry  in 
Stratford,  since  they  would  have  marked  the  distinc- 
tions of  their  rank  chiefly  by  greater  reserve  of  man- 
ners, it  is  probable  that,  after  all,  Shakspeare,  with  his 
enormity  of  delight  in  exhibitions  of  human  nature, 
would  have  mostly  cultivated  that  class  of  society  in 
which  the  feelings  are  more  elementary  and  simple,  in 
which  the  thoughts  speak  a  plainer  language,  and  in 
which  the  restraints  of  factitious  or  conventional  de- 
corum are  exchanged  for  the  restraints  of  mere  sexual 
decency.  It  is  a  noticeable  fact  to  aU  who  have  looked 
upon  human  life  with  an  eye  of  strict  attention,  that 
the  abstract  image  of  womanhood,  in  its  loveliness,  its 
delicacy,  and  its  modesty,  nowhere  makes  itself  more 
impressive  or  more  advantageously  felt  than  in  the 
humblest  cottages,  because  it  is  there  brought  into  im- 
mediate juxtaposition  with  the  grossness  of  manners, 
»nd  the  careless  license  of  language  incident  to  the 
fathers  and  brothers  of  the  house.  And  this  is  more 
especially  true  in  a  nation  of  unafiected  sexual  gal- 
.antry,^*  «uch  as  the  English  and  the  Gothic  races  in 
^neral ;  since,  under  the  immunity  which  their  women 


16  SHAK.SFEAaifi. 

enjoy  from  all  servile  labors  of  a  coarse  or  out-of-doors 
order,  by  as  much  lower  as  they  descend  in  the  scale 
of  rank,  by  so  much  more  df^  they  benefit  under  the 
force  of  contrast  with  the  men  of  their  own  level.  A 
young  man  of  that  class,  however  noble  in  appearance, 
is  somewhat  degraded  in  the  eyes  of  women,  by  the 
necessity  which  his  indigence  imposes  of  working  undei 
a  master ;  but  a  beautiful  young  woman,  in  the  very 
poorest  family,  unless  she  enters  upon  a  life  of  domestic 
servitude,  (in  which  case  her  labors  are  light,  suited  to 
her  sex,  and  withdrawn  from  the  publi  i  eye,)  so  long 
in  fact  as  she  stays  under  her  father's  roof,  is  as  per- 
fectly her  own  mistress  and  sui  juris  as  the  daughter 
of  an  earl.  This  personal  dignity,  brought  into  stronger 
relief  by  the  mercenary  employments  of  her  male  con- 
nections, and  the  feminine  gentleness  of  her  voice  and 
manners,  exhibited  under  the  same  advantages  of  con- 
trast, oftentimes  combine  to  make  a  young  cottage  beauty 
as  fascinating  an  object  as  any  woman  of  any  station. 

Hence  we  may  in  part  account  for  the  great  event  of 
Shakspeare's  early  manhood,  his  premature  marriage. 
It  has  always  been  known,  or  at  least  traditionally 
received  for  a  fact,  that  Shakspeare  had  married  whilst 
yet  a  boy,  and  that  his  wife  was  unaccountably  older 
than  himself.  In  the  very  earliest  biographical  sketch 
of  the  poet,  compiled  by  Howe,  from  materials  col- 
lected by  Betterton,  the  actor,  it  was  stated,  (and  tha* 
statement  is  now  ascertained  to  have  been  correct,) 
thft  he  had  married  Anne  Hathaway, '  the  daughter  of 
»  substantial  yeoman.'  Further  than  this  nothing  was 
known.  But  in  September,  1836,  was  published  a 
7ery  remarkable  document,  which  gives  the  assurance 
%{  law  to  the  time  and  fact  of  this  event,  yet   stili 


8HAKSFEARE.  47 

inless  collated  with  another  record,  does  nothing  to 
essen  the  mystery  which  had  previously  surrounded  its 
circumstances.  This  document  consists  of  two  parts  ; 
the  first,  and  principal,  according  to  the  logic  of  the 
case,  though  second  according  to  the  arrangement, 
being  a  licerise  for  the  marriage  of  William  Shakspeare 
with  Anne  Hathaway,  under  the  condition  '  of  onct 
asking  of  the  bannes  of  matrimony,'  that  is,  in  effect, 
dispensing  with  two  out  of  the  three  customary  ask- 
ings ;  the  second  or  subordinate  part  of  the  document 
being  a  bond  entered  into  by  two  sureties,  viz. :  Fulke 
Sandells  and  John  Rychardson,  both  described  as 
agricolce  or  yeomen,  and  both  marksmen,  (that  is, 
incapable  of  writing,  and  '  therefore  subscribing  by 
means  of  marks,)  for  the  payment  of  forty  pounds 
sterling,  in  the  event  of  Shakspeare,  yet  a  minor,  and 
incapable  of  binding  himself,  failing  to  fulfil  the  con- 
ditions of  the  license.  In  the  bond,  drawn  up  in  Latin, 
there  is  no  mention  of  Shakspeare's  name  ;  but  in  the 
license,  which  is  altogether  English,  his  name,  of 
course,  stands  foremost ;  and,  as  it  may  gratify  the 
reader  to  see  the  very  words  and  orthography  of  the 
original,  we  here  extract  the  operative  part  of  this 
document,  prefacing  only  that  the  license  is  attached 
by  way  of  explanation  to  the  bond.  '  The  condition 
of  this  obligation  is  suche,  that  if  hereafter  there  shall 
not  appere  any  lawfull  lett  or  impediment,  by  reason  of 
any  precontract,  &c.,  but  that  Willm.  Shagspere,  one 
thone  ptie,*  [on  the  one  party,]  '  and  Anne  Hathwey 
of  Stratford,  in  the  diocess  of  "Worcester,  maiden,  may 
lawfully  solemnize  matrimony  together ;  and  in  the 
same  afterwards  remaine  and  continew  like  man  and 
•viffe.     And,  moreover,  if  the  said  Willm.  Shagspere 


18  8HAKSFEABE. 

do  not  proceed  to  solemnization  of  mariadg  with  th| 
said  Anne  Hathwey,  without  the  consent  of  hir  frinds 
—  then  the  said  obligation  '  [viz.,  to  pay  forty  pounds" 
•  to  be  voyd  and  of  none  effect,  or  els  to  stand  &  abid« 
in  full  force  and  vertue.' 

What  are  we  to  think  of  this  document  ?  Trepida- 
tion and  anxiety  are  written  upon  its  face.  The 
parties  are  not  to  be  married  by  a  special  license ;  not 
even  by  an  ordinary  license ;  in  that  case  no  proclama- 
tion of  banns,  no  public  asking  at  all,  would  have  been 
requisite.  Economical  scruples  are  consulted ;  and 
yet  the  regular  movement  of  the  marriage  '  through 
the  bell-ropes '  ^^  is  disturbed.  Economy,  which  re- 
tards the  marriage,  is  here  evidently  in  collision  with 
some  opposite  principle  which  precipitates  it.  How  is 
all  this  to  be  explained  ?  Much  light  is  afforded  by  the 
date  Avhen  illustrated  by  another  document.  The  bond 
Dears  date  on  the  28th  day  of  November,  in  the  25th 
year  of  our  lady  the  queen,  that  is,  in  1582.  Now 
the  baptism  of  Shakspeare's  eldest  child,  Susanna,  is 
registered  on  the  26th  of  May  in  the  year  following. 
Suppose,  therefore,  that  his  marriage  was  solemnized 
on  the  1st  day  of  December;  it  was  barely  possible 
that  it  could  be  earlier,  considering  that  the  sureties, 
drinking,  perhaps,  at  Worcester  throughout  the  28  th 
of  November,  would  require  the  29th,  in  so  dreary  a 
season,  for  their  return  to  Stratford ;  after  which  some 
preparation  might  be  requisite  to  the  bride,  since  the 
marriage  was  not  celebrated  at  Stratford.  Next  sup. 
pose  the  birth  of  Miss  Susanna  to  have  occurred,  like 
her  father's,  two  days  before  her  baptism,  viz.,  on  the 
24th  of  May,  From  December  the  Ist  to  May  the 
34th,  both   days   inclusively,   are   one   hundred  ana 


SHAKSPEABE.  49 

seventy-five  days ;  which,  divided  by  seven,  give* 
precisely  twenty-five  weeks,  that  is  to  say,  six  month« 
short  by  one  week.  Oh,  fie,  Miss  Susanna,  you  came 
rather  before  you  were  wanted. 

Mr.  Campbell's  ccmment  upon  the  affair  is,  that  '  if 
this  was  the  case,'  viz.,  if  the  baptism  were  really 
solemnized  on  the  26th  of  May,  '  the  poet's  first  child 
would  appear  to  have  been  born  only  six  months  and 
eleven  days  after  the  bond  was  entered  into.'  And 
he  then  concludes  that,  on  this  assumption,  '  Miss 
Susanna  Shakspeare  came  into  the  world  a  little  pre- 
maturely.' But  this  is  to  doubt  where  there  never  was 
any  ground  for  doubting ;  the  baptism  was  certainly  on 
the  26th  of  May  ;  and,  in  the  next  place,  the  calcula- 
tion of  six  months  and  eleven  days  is  sustained  by 
substituting  lunar  months  for  calendar,  and  then  only 
by  supposing  the  marriage  to  have  been  celebrated  on 
the  very  day  of  subscribing  the  bond  in  Worcester, 
and  the  baptism  to  have  been  coincident  with  the 
birth ;  of  which  suppositions  the  latter  is  improbable, 
and  the  former,  considering  the  situation  of  Worcester, 
impossible. 

Strange  it  is,  that,  whilst  all  biographers  have 
worked  with  so  much  zeal  upon  the  most  barren  dates 
or  most  baseless  traditions  in  the  great  poet's  life, 
realizing  in  a  manner  the  chimeras  of  Laputa,  and 
endeavoring  '  to  extract  sunbeams  from  cucumbers,' 
^uch  a  story  with  regard  to  such  an  event,  no  fiction 
of  village  scandal,  but  involved  in  legal  documents,  a 
gtory  so  significant  and  so  eloquent  to  the  intelligent, 
should  formerly  have  been  dismissed  without  notice  of 
any  kind,  and  even  now,  after  the  discovery  of  1836, 
with  nothing  beyonl  a  slight  conjectural  insinuation. 
4 


50  SHAKSF£ARK. 

For  our  parts,  we  should  have  beeu  the  last  amongst 
the  biographers  to  unearth  any  forgotten  scandal,  or, 
after  so  vast  a  lapse  of  time,  and  when  the  grave  had 
«hut  out  all  but  charitable  thoughts,  to  point  any  moral 
censiires  at  a  simple  case  of  natural  frality,  youthful 
precipitancy  of  passion,  of  all  trespasses  the  most 
venial,  where  the  final  intentions  are  honorable.  But 
in  tiiis  Kise  there  seems  to  have  been  something  more 
in  motion  than  passion  or  the  ardor  of  youth.  '  I  like 
not,'  says  Parson  Evans,  (alluding  to  Falstaff  in  mas- 
querade,) '  I  like  not  when  a  woman  has  a, great  peard ; 
I  spy  a  great  peard  under  her  mufiler.'  Neither  do 
we  like  the  spectacle  of  a  mature  young  woman,  five 
years  past  her  majority,  wearing  the  semblance  of 
having  been  led  astray  by  a  boy  who  had  still  two  years 
and  a  half  to  run  of  his  minority.  Shakspeare  him- 
self, looking  back  on  this  part  of  his  youthful  history 
from  his  maturest  years,  breathes  forth  pathetic  coun- 
sels against  the  errors  into  which  his  own  inexperience 
had  been  insnared.  The  disparity  of  years  between 
himself  and  his  wife  he  notices  in  a  beautiful  scene  of 
the  Twelfth  Night.  The  Duke,  Orsino,  observing  the 
sensibility  which  the  pretended  Cesario  had  betrayed 
on  hearing  some  touching  old  snatches  of  a  love  strain, 
■wears  that  his  beardless  page  must  have  felt  the  pas- 
rion  of  love,  which  the  other  admits.  Upon  this  the 
dialogue  proceeds  thus : 

♦  Duke.    What  kind  of  woman  is't  ? 
Viola,  Of  your  complexion. 

B^ike.    She  is  not  worth  thee  then.     What  years  ? 
Viyla.  I'fSutk. 

About  your  years,  my  lord. 
Duke.    Too  old,  by  heaven.     Let  still  the  woman  tak* 
^  elder  than  hertelf :  to  wean  she  to  At», 


SHAKSFEABB.  A1 

So  sways  she  level  in  her  husband's  heart. 
For,  boy,  however  we  do  praise  ourselves. 
Our  fancies  are  more  giddy  and  iinfirm. 
More  longing,  wavering,  sooner  lost  and  won. 
Than  women's  are. 

Viola  I  think  it  well,  my  lord. 

Duke.    Then  let  thy  love  be  younger  than  thyself.. 
Or  thy  affection  cannot  hold  the  bent ; 
For  women  are  as  roses,  whose  fair  flower. 
Being  once  display'd,  doth  fall  that  very  hoar.' 

These  counsels  were  uttered  nearly  twenty  years 
fcfter  the  event  m  his  own  life,  to  which  they  probably 
look  back ;  for  this  play  is  supposed  to  have  been 
written  in  Shakspeare's  thirty-eighth  year.  And  we 
may  read  an  earnestness  in  pressing  the  point  as  to 
the  inverted  disparity  of  years,  which  indicates  pretty 
clearly  an  appeal  to  the  lessons  of  his  personal  experi- 
ence. But  his  other  indiscretion,  in  having  yielded  so 
far  to  passion  and  opportunity  as  to  crop  by  preliba- 
tion,  and  before  they  were  hallowed,  those  flowers  of 
paradise  which  belonged  to  his  marriage  day ;  this  he 
adverts  to  with  even  more  solemnity  of  sorrow,  and 
with  more  pointed  energy  of  moral  reproof,  in  the 
very  last  drama  which  is  supposed  to  have  proceeded 
from  his  pen,  and  therefore  with  the  force  and  sanctity 
of  testamentary  counsel.  The  Tempest  is  all  but 
ascertained  to  have  been  composed  in  1611,  that  is, 
•  about  five  years  before  the  poet's  death ;  and  indeed 
could  not  have  been  composed  much  earlier ;  for  the 
very  incident  which  suggested  the  basis  of  the  plot, 
*nd  of  the  local  scene,  viz.,  the  shipwreck  of  Sir 
George  Somers  on  the  Berraudas,  (which  v,  ^re  in  con- 
lequence  denominated  tb"?  "Vomers'  Islands,)  did  not 
occur  until  the  year   1609.     In   tne   opening  of  the 


63  8B.AKSFEA.BE. 

fourth  act,  Prosjiero  formally  betroths  his  daughter  to 
Ferdinand ;  and  in  doing  so  he  pays  the  prince  a  well- 
tnerited  compliment  of  having  'worthily  purchas'd 
this  rich  jewel,  by  the  patience  with  which,  for  her 
Bake,  he  had  supported  harsh  usage,  and  other  puinfu 
circumstances  of  his  trial.     But,  he  adds  solemnly, 

*  If  thou  dost  break  her  virgin  knot  before 
All  sanctimonious  ceremonies  may 
With  full  and  holy  rite  be  ministered  ; 

in  that  case  what  would  follow  ? 

•  No  Bweet  aspersion  shall  the  heavens  let  fell. 
To  make  this  contract  grow;  but  barren  hate, 
Sour-ey^d  disdain  and  discord,  shall  bestrew 
The  union  of  your  bed  with  weeds  so  loathly 
That  you  shall  hate  it  both.  Therefore  take  heed. 
As  Hymen's  lamps  shall  light  you.' 

The  young  prince  assures  him  in  reply,  that  no 
strength  of  opportunity,  concurring  with  the  uttermost 
temptation,  not 

•  the  murkiest  den, 

The  most  opportune  place,  the  strong' st  suggestion 
Our  worser  genius  can ,' 

should  ever  prevail  to  lay  asleep  his  jealousy  of  self- 
control,  so  as  to  take  any  advantage  of  Miranda's 
mnocence.  And  he  adds  an  argument  for  this  absti- 
nence, by  way  of  reminding  Prospero,  that  not  honor 
only,  but  even  prudential  care  of  his  own  happiness,  is 
interested  in  the  observance  of  his  promise.  Any 
ttnhftllowed  anticipation  would,  as  he  insinuates, 

•  take  away 
The  edge  of  that  day's  celebration, 

When  I  shall  think,  or  Phoebus'  steeds  are  foonder'd. 
Or  night  kept  chain'd  below; ' 

Stat  is,  when  even  the  winged  hours  would  seem  t« 


SHAKSPEABE.  M 

aove  too  slowly.  Even  thus  Prospero  is  not  quite 
latisfied.  During  his  subsequent  dialogue  with  Ariel, 
we  are  to  suppose  that  Ferdinand,  in  conversing  apart 
with  Miranda,  betrays  more  impassioned  ardor  than 
the  wise  magician  altogether  approves.  The  prince's 
caresses  have  not  been  unobserved ;  and  thus  Prospero 
renews  his  warning : 

'  Look  thou  be  true :  do  not  give  dalliance 
Too  much  the  rein  :  the  strongest  oaths  are  straw 
To  the  fire  i'  the  blood  :  be  more  abstemious. 
Or  else  —  good  night  your  vow.' 

The  royal  lover  reassures  him  of  his  loyalty  to  hi& 
engagements ;  and  again  the  wise  father,  so  honorably 
jealous  for  his  daughter,  professes  himself  satisfied 
with  the  prince's  pledges. 

Now  in  all  these  emphatic  warnings,  uttering  the 
language  '  of  that  sad  wisdom  folly  leaves  behind,' 
who  can  avoid  reading,  as  in  subtle  hieroglyphics,  the 
secret  record  of  Shakspeare's  own  nuptial  disappoint- 
ments ?  We,  indeed,  that  is,  universal  posterity 
through  every  age,  have  reason  to  rejoice  in  these  dis- 
appointments ;  for,  to  them,  past  all  doubt,  we  are 
indebted  for  Shakspeare's  subsequent  migration  to 
London,  and  his  public  occupation,  which,  giving  him 
a  deep  pecuniary  interest  in  the  productions  of  his  pen, 
such  as  no  other  literary  application  of  his  powers 
•ould  have  approached  in  that  day,  were  eventually  the 
mean^  of  drawing  forth  those  divine  works  which  have 
lurvived  their  author  for  our  everlasting  benefit. 

Our  own  reading  and  deciphering  of  the  whole  case 
is  as  follows.  The  Shakspeares  were  a  handsome 
'amily,  both  father  and  sons.  This  we  assume  upon 
^e   following  grounds:     First,   oa    the   presumption 


54  SHAKSPEABE. 

arising  out  of  John  Sliakspeare's  having  won  the  favot 
of  a  young  heiress  in  higher  rank  than  himself; 
secondly,  on  the  presumption  involved  in  the  fact  of 
three  amongst  his  four  sons,  having  gone  upon  the 
stage,  to  which  the  most  obvious  (and  perhaps  in  those 
days  a  sine  qua  non)  recommendation  would  be  a  good 
person  and  a  pleasing  countenance ;  thirdly,  on  the 
direct  evidence  of  Aubrey,  who  assures  us  that  Wil- 
liam Shakspeare  was  a  handsome  and  a  well-shaped 
man  ;  fourthly,  on  the  implicit  evidence  of  the  Strat- 
ford monument,  which  exhibits  a  man  of  good  figure 
and  noble  countenance  ;  fifthly,  on  the  confirmation  of 
this  evidence  by  the  Chandos  portrait,  which  exhibiia 
noble  features,  illustrated  by  the  utmost  sweetness  of 
expression  ;  sixthly,  on  the  selection  of  theatrical  parts, 
which  it  is  known  that  Shakspeare  personated,  most  of 
them  being  such  as  required  some  dignity  of  form,  viz., 
kings,  the  athletic  (though  aged)  follower  of  an  ath- 
letic young  man,  and  supernatural  beings.  On  these 
grounds,  direct  or  circumstantial,  we  believe  ourselves 
warranted  in  assuming  that  William  Shakspeare  was  a 
handsome  and  even  noble  looking  boy.  Miss  Anne 
Hathaway  had  herself  probably  some  personal  attrac- 
jions  ;  and,  if  an  indigent  girl,  who  looked  for  no 
pecuniary  advantages,  would  probably  have  been  early 
sought  in  marriage.  But  as  the  daughter  of  '  a  sub- 
stantial yeoman,'  who  would  expect  some  fortune  in 
ais  daughter's  suitors,  she  had,  to  speak  coarsely,  a 
'ittle  outlived  her  market.  Time  she  had  none  to  lose, 
^''illiam  Shakspeare  pleased  her  eye  ;  and  the  gentle- 
uess  of  his  nature  made  him  an  apt  subject  for  female 
blandishments,  possib'y  for  female  arts.  Withou* 
mputing,  however,  to  this  Anne  Hathaway  any  thiny 


SHAKSFEARE.  65 

BO  hateful  as  a  settled  plot  for  insnaring  him,  it  was 
easy  enough  for  a  mature  woman,  armed  ^vith  such 
inevitable  advantages  of  experience  and  of  self-posses- 
iion,  to  draw  onward  a  blushing  novice  ;  and,  without 
directly  creating  opportunities,  to  place  nim  in  the  way 
of  turning  to  account  such  as  naturally  offered.  Young 
boys  are  generally  flattered  by  the  condescending 
ttotice  of  grown-up  women  ;  and  perhaps  Shakspeare's 
own  lines  upon  a  similar  situation,  to  a  young  boy 
adomed  with  the  same  natural  gifts  as  himself,  may 
give  us  the  key  to  the  result : 

•  Gentle  thou  art,  and  therefore  to  be  won  ; 
Beauteous  thou  art,  therefore  to  be  assail'd  ; 
And,  when  a  woman  woes,  what  woman's  son 
Will  sourly  leave  her  till  he  have  prevail'd  ? ' 

Once,  indeed,  entangled  in  such  a  pursuit,  any  person 
of  manly  feeling  would  be  sensible  that  he  had  no 
retreat ;  that  would  be  —  to  insult  a  woman,  grievously 
to  wound  her  sexual  pride,  and  to  insure  her  lasting 
scorn  and  hatred.  These  were  consequences  which 
the  gentle-minded  Shakspeare  could  not  face.  He 
pursued  his  good  fortunes,  half  perhaps  in  heedless- 
ness, half  in  desperation,  until  he  was  roused  by  the 
■.lamorous  displeasure  of  her  family  upon  first  discov- 
ering the  situation  of  their  kinswoman.  For  such  a 
Bituation  there  could  be  but  one  atonement,  and  that 
was  hurried  forward  by  both  parties  :  whilst,  out  of 
delicacy  towards  the  bride  the  wedding  was  not  cele- 
trated  in  Stratford,  (where  the  register  contains  no 
notice  of  such  an  event);  nor,  as  Malone  imagined,  in 
Weston-upon-Avon,  that  b^ing  in  the  diocese  of  Qlou* 
Tester ;  but  in  some  parish,  as  yet  undiscovered,  in  the 
iiocese  of  Worcester 


56  SHAKSP£ABE. 

But  noM'  arose  a  serious  question  as  Co  t'ne  future 
maintenance  of  the  young  people.  John  Shakspeare 
was  depressed  in  his  circumstances,  and  he  had  other 
children  besides  William,  viz.,  three  sons  and  a  daugh- 
ter. The  elder  lives  have  represented  him  as  burdened 
<vith  ten  ;  but  this  was  an  error,  arising  out  of  the  con- 
fusion between  John  Shakspeare  the  glover,  and  Johs 
Shakspeare  a  shoemaker.  This  error  has  been  thuB 
far  of  use,  that,  by  exposing  the  fact  of  two  Jolin 
Shakspeares  (not  kinsmen)  residing  in  Stratford-upon- 
Avon,  it  has  satisfactorily  proved  the  name  to  be 
amongst  those  which  are  locally  indigenous  to  War- 
wickshire. Meantime  it  is  now  ascertained  that  John 
Shakspeare  the  glover  had  only  eight  children,  viz., 
four  daughters  and  four  sons.  The  order  of  theli 
succession  was  this  :  Joan,  Margaret,  William,  Gil- 
bert, a  second  Joan,  Anne,  Richard,  and  Edmund. 
Three  of  the  daughters,  viz.,  the  two  eldest  of  the 
family,  Joan  and  Margaret,  together  with  Anne,  died 
in  childhood.  All  the  rest  attained  mature  ages,  and 
of  these  William  was  the  eldest.  This  might  give  him 
some  advantage  in  his  father's  regard  ;  but  in  a  ques- 
tion of  pecuniary  provision,  precedency  amongst  the 
children  of  an  insolvent  is  nearly  nominal.  For  the 
present  John  Shakspeare  could  do  little  for  his  son ; 
and,  under  these  circumstances,  perhaps  the  father  of 
Anne  Hathaway  would  come  forward  to  assist  the  new- 
married  couple.  This  condition  of  dependency  would 
furnish  matter  for  painful  feelings  and  irritating  words 
ITie  youthful  husband,  whose  mind  would  be  expand- 
mg  as  rapidly  as  the  leaves  and  blossoms  of  spring-time 
\ii  polar  latitudes,  would  soon  come  to  appreciate  the 
•ort  of  wiles  by  which  he  had  been  caught.    The  femal« 


SHAKSFEABB.  57 

oiind  is  quick,  and  almost  giitea  wiin  ine  power  of 
iritclicraft,  to  decipher  what  is  passing  in  the  thoughts 
of  familiar  companions.  Silent  and  forbearing  as  Wil- 
liam Shakspeare  might  be,  A.nne,  his  staid  wife,  would 
read  his  secret  reproaches  ;  ill  would  she  dissemble 
her  wrath,  and  the  less  so  from  the  consciousness  of 
having  deserved  them.  It  is  no  uncommon  case  fm 
women  to  feel  anger  in  connection  with  one  subject, 
and  to  express  it  in  connection  with  another  ;  which 
other,  perhaps,  (except  as  a  serviceable  mask,)  would 
have  been  a  matter  of  indifference  to  their  feelings. 
Anne  would,  therefore,  reply  to  those  inevitable  re- 
proaches which  her  own  sense  must  presume  to  be 
lurking  in  her  husband's  heart,  by  others  equally 
stinging,  on  his  inability  to  support  his  family,  and  on 
his  obligations  to  her  father's  purse.  Shakspeare,  we 
may  be  sure,  would  be  ruminating  every  hour  on  the 
means  of  his  deliverance  from  so  painful  a  depen- 
dency ;  and  at  length,  after  four  years'  conjugal  dis- 
cord, he  would  resolve  upon  that  plan  of  solitaiy 
emigration  to  the  metropolis,  which,  at  the  same  time 
that  it  released  him  from  the  humiliation  of  domestic 
feuds,  succeeded  so  splendidly  for  his  worldly  pros- 
Derity,  and  with  a  train  of  consequences  so  vast  for  all 
I'uture  ages. 

Such,  we  are  persuaded,  was  the  real  course  of 
Shakspeare's  transition  from  school-boy  pursuits  to  his 
"ublic  career.  And  upon  the  known  temperament  of 
""hakspeare,  his  genial  disposition  to  enjoy  life  without 
iigturbing  his  enjoyment  by  fretting  anxieties,  we  build 
ihe  conclusion,  that  had  his  friends  furnished  him  with 
impler  funds,  and  had  his  marriage  been  well  assorted 
OT  happy,  we  —  the  world  of  posterity  —  should  have 


58  SHAKSFEARB. 

o8t  the  whole  benefit  and  delight  which  we  have  sine* 
-eaped  from  his  matchless  faculties.  The  motives 
which  drove  him yrom  Stratford  are  clear  enough ;  hut 
what  motives  determined  his  course  to  London,  and 
especially  to  the  stage,  still  remains  to  be  explained. 
Stratford-upon-Avon,  lying  in  the  high  road  from  Lon- 
don through  Oxford  to  Birmingham,  (or  more  generallj 
to  the  north,)  had  been  continually  visited  by  some  of 
the  best  comedians  during  Shakspeare's  childhood. 
One  or  two  of  the  most  respectable  metropolitan  actors 
were  natives  of  Stratford.  These  would  be  well 
known  to  the  elder  Shakspeare.  But,  apart  from  that 
accident,  it  is  notorious  that  mere  legal  necessity  and 
usage  would  compel  all  companies  of  actors,  upon 
coming  into  any  town,  to  seek,  in  the  first  place,  from 
the  chief  magistrate,  a  license  for  opening  a  theatre, 
and  next,  over  and  above  this  public  sanction,  to  seek 
Lis  personal  favor  and  patronage.  As  an  alderman, 
therefore,  but  still  more  whilst  clothed  with  the  ofiicial 
powers  of  chief  magistrate,  the  poet's  father  would 
have  opportunities  of  doing  essential  services  to  many 
persons  connected  with  the  London  stage.  The  con- 
versation of  comedians  acquainted  with  books,  fresh 
from  the  keen  and  sparkling  circles  of  the  metropolis, 
and  filled  with  racy  anecdotes  of  the  court,  as  well  as 
of  public  life  generally,  could  not  but  have  been  fasci- 
nating, by  comparison  with  the  stagnant  society  of 
Stratford.  Hospitalities  on  a  liberal  scale  would  be 
ofiered  to  these  men.  Not  impossibly  this  fact  might 
be  one  principal  key  to  those  dilapidations  which  the 
family  estate  had  suffered.  These  actors,  on  then 
part,  would  retain  a  grateful  sense  of  the  kindness  thej 
oaa  received,  and  would  seek  to  repay  it  to  John  Shak 


8HAKSP£ASE.  A§ 

speare,  now  that  he  was  depressed  in  his  fortunes,  aa 
opportunities  might  offer.  His  oldest  son,  growing  up 
%  handsome  young  man,  and  beyond  all  doubt  from  his 
earliest  days  of  most  splendid  colloquial  powers,  (for 
assuredly  of  him  it  may  be  taken  for  granted, 

•  Nee  licuit  populis  parvum  te,  Nile,  videre,) 

would  be  often  reproached  in  a  friendly  way  for 
burying  himself  in  a  country  life.  These  overtures, 
prompted  alike  by  gratitude  to  the  father,  and  a  real 
selfish  interest  in  the  talents  of  his  son,  would  at  length 
take  a  definite  shape ;  and  upon  some  clear  under- 
standing as  to  the  terms  of  such  an  arrangement, 
William  Shakspeare  would  at  length,  (about  1586, 
according  to  the  received  account,  that  is,  in  the  fifth 
year  of  his  married  life,  and  the  twenty-third  or  twen- 
ty-fourth of  his  age,)  unaccompanied  by  wife  or  chil- 
dren, translate  himself  to  London.  Later  than  1586 
it  could  not  well  be,  for  already  in  1589  it  has  been 
recently  ascertained  that  he  held  a  share  in  the  property 
of  a  leading  theatre. 

We  must  here  stop  to  notice,  and  the  reader  will 
allow  us  to  notice  with  summary  indignation,  the 
slanderous  and  idle  tale  which  represents  Shakspeare 
ds  having  fled  to  London  in  the  character  of  a  criminal, 
*rom  the  persecutions  of  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  of  Charle- 
.  ot.  This  tale  has  long  been  propagated  under  two 
separate  impulses.  Chiefly,  perhaps,  under  the  vulgar 
love  of  pointed  and  glaring  contrasts  ;  the  splendor  of 
the  man  was  in  this  instance  brought  into  a  sort  of 
'epigrammatic  antithesis  M'ith  the  humility  of  his  for- 
rznes  ;  secondly,  under  a  baser  impulse,  the  malicioui 
oleasure  of  seeing  a  great   man   degraded.     Accord- 


10  SHAKSFEA.BK. 

ingly,  as  in  the  case  of  Miltoii,^^  \t  has  been  affirmed 
that  Shakspeare  had  suffered  corporal  chastisement,  in 
fact,  (we  abhor  to  utter  such  words,)  that  he  had  been 
judicially  whipt.  Now,  first  of  all,  let  us  mark  the 
inconsistency  of  this  tale.  The  poet  was  whipped, 
that  is,  he  was  punished  most  disproportionately,  and 
yet  he  fled  to  avoid  punishment.  Next,  we  are  in- 
formed that  his  offence  was  deer-stealing,  and  from 
the  park  of  Sir  Thomas  Lucy.  And  it  has  been  well 
ascertained  that  Sir  Thomas  had  no  deer,  and  had  no 
park.  Moreover,  deer-«tealing  was  regarded  by  our 
ancestors  exactly  as  poaching  is  regarded  by  us.  Deer 
ran  wild  in  all  the  great  forests  ;  and  no  offence  was 
looked  upon  as  so  venial,  none  so  compatible  \vith  a 
noble  Robin-Hood  style  of  character,  as  this  very 
trespass  upon  what  were  regarded  as  fera  naturce,  and 
not  at  all  as  domestic  property.  But  had  it  been  other- 
wise, a  trespass  was  not  punishable  with  whipping ; 
nor  had  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  the  power  to  irritate  a  whole 
community,  like  Stratford-upon-Avon,  by  branding  with 
permanent  disgrace  a  young  man  so  closely  connected 
with  three  at  least  of  the  best  families  in  the  neighbor- 
hood. Besides,  had  Shakspeare  suffered  any  dishonor 
»f  that  kind,  the  scandal  would  infallibly  have  pursued 
nim  at  his  very  heels  to  London ;  and  in  that  case 
Greene,  who  has  left  on  record,  in  a  posthumous  work 
of  1592,  his  malicious  feelings  towards  Shakspeare, 
could  not  have  failed  to  notice  it.  For,  be  it  remem- 
bered, that  a  judicial  flagellation  contains  a  twofold 
ignominy.  Flagellation  is  ignominious  in  its  own  na- 
ture, even  though  unjustly  inflicted,  and  by  a  ruffian , 
secondly,  any  judicial  punishment  is  ignominious,  evet 
though  not  wearing  a  shade  of  personal  degradation 


SHAKSPEARE.  61 

kVow  a  judicial  flagellation  includes  both  features  of 
dishonor.  And  is  it  to  be  imagined  that  an  enemy, 
searching  with  the  diligence  of  malice  for  matter 
against  Shakspcare,  should  have  failed,  six  years  after 
the  event,  to  hear  of  that  very  memorable  disgrace 
which  had  exiled  him  from  Stratford,  and  was  the  very 
occasion  of  his  first  resorting  to  London ;  or  that  a 
leading  company  of  players  in  the  metropolis,  one  of 
whom,  and  a  chief  one,  was  his  own  townsman,  should 
cheerfully  adopt  into  their  society,  as  an  honored 
partner,  a  young  man  yet  flagrant  from  the  lash  of  the 
executioner  or  the  beadle  ? 

This  tale  is  fabulous,  and  rotten  to  its  core ;  yet 
even  this  does  less  dishonor  to  Shakspeare's  memory 
than  the  sequel  attached  to  it.  A  sort  of  scurrilous 
rondeau,  consisting  of  nine  lines,  so  loathsome  in  its 
brutal  stupidity,  and  so  vulgar  in  its  expression,  that 
we  shall  not  pollute  our  pages  by  transcribing  it,  has 
been  imputed  to  Shakspeare  ever  since  the  days  of  the 
credulous  Rowe.  The  total  point  of  this  idiot's  drivel 
consists  in  calling  Sir  Thomas  '  an  asse  ; '  and  well  it 
justifies  the  poet's  own  remark,  'Let  there  be  gall 
enough  in  thy  ink,  no  matter  though  thou  write  with  a 
goose-pen.'  Our  own  belief  is,  that  these  lines  were 
A  production  of  Charles  IL's  reign,  and  applied  to  a 
Sir  Thomas  Lucy,  not  very  far  removed,  if  at  all,  from 
the  age  of  him  who  first  picked  up  the  precious  filth. 
The  phrase  '  parliament  member,^  we  believe  to  be 
uite  unknown  in  the  colloquial  use  of  Queen  Eliza- 
■eth's  reign. 

'  liut,  that  we  may  rid  ourselves  once  and  for  exci 
♦f  this  outrageous  calumny  ipon  Shakspeai^e's  memory, 
re  shall  pursue  the  story  to  its  final  stage.     Even 


62  SIIAKSFEABE. 

Malone  has  been  thoughtless  enough  to  accredit  thii 
closing  chapter,  which  contains,  in  fact,  such  a  super- 
fetation  of  folly  as  the  annals  of  human  dulness  do  not 
exceed.  Let  us  recapitulate  the  points  of  the  story. 
A  baronet,  who  has  no  deer  and  no  park,  is  supposed 
to  persecute  a  poet  for  stealing  these  aerial  deer  out  of 
this  aerial  park,  both  lying  in  nephelococcygia.  The 
poet  sleeps  upon  this  wrong  for  eighteen  years  ;  but  at 
length,  hearing  that  his  persecutor  is  dead  and  buried, 
he  conceives  bloody  thoughts  of  revenge.  And  this 
revenge  he  purposes  to  execute  by  picking  a  hole  in 
his  dead  enemy's  coat-of-arms.  Is  this  coat-of-arms, 
then.  Sir  Thomas  Lucy's  ?  Why,  no  ;  Malone  admits 
that  it  is  not.  For  the  poet,  suddenly  recollecting  that 
this  ridicule  would  settle  upon  the  son  of  his  enemy, 
selects  another  coat-of-arms,  with  which  his  dead 
enemy  never  had  any  connection,  and  he  spends  his 
thunder  and  lightning  upon  this  irrelevant  object ;  and, 
after  all,  the  ridicule  itself  lies  in  a  Welshman's  mis- 
pronouncing one  single  heraldic  term  —  a  Welshman 
vho  mispronounces  all  words.  The  last  act  of  the 
poet's  malice  recalls  to  us  a  sort  of  jest-book  story  of 
an  Irishman,  the  vulgarity  of  which  the  reader  will 
oardon  in  consideration  of  its  relevancy.  The  Irish- 
nan  having  lost  a  pair  of  silk  stockings,  mentions  to  a 
.riend  that  he  has  taken  steps  for  recovering  them  by 
an  advertisement,  offering  a  reward  to  the  finder.  His 
friend  objects  that  the  costs  of  advertising,  and  the 
reward,  would  eat  out  the  full  value  of  the  silk  stock- 
ings. But  to  this  the  Irishman  replies,  with  a  knowing 
air,  that  he  is  not  so  green  as  to  have  overlooked  that 
%nd  that,  to  keep  down  the  reward,  he  had  advcrtisec 
\Iie  stockings  as  worst&d      Not  at  all  less  flagrant  is  tfa« 


SHAKSPEABB.  68 

bull  ascribed  to  Shakspeare,  when  he  is  made  to  punish 
a  dead  man  by  personalities  meant  for  his  exclusive 
ear,  through  his  coat-of-arms,  but  at  the  same  time, 
with  the  express  purpose  of  blunting  and  defeating  the 
edge  of  his  own  scurrility,  is  made  to  substitute  for  the 
real  arms  some  others  which  had  no  more  relation  to 
the  dead  enemy  than  they  had  to  the  poet  himself. 
This  is  the  very  sublime  of  folly,  beyond  which  human 
dotage  cannot  advance. 

It  is  painful,  indeed,  and  dishonorable  to  human 
nature,  that  whenever  men  of  vulgar  habits  and  of 
poor  education  wish  to  impress  us  with  a  feeling  of 
respect  for  a  man's  talent,  they  are  sure  to  cite,  by 
way  of  evidence,  some  gross  instance  of  malignity. 
Power,  in  their  minds,  is  best  illustrated  by  malice  or 
by  the  infliction  of  pain.  To  this  unwelcome  fact  we 
have  some  evidence  in  the  wretched  tale  which  we 
have  j  ust  dismissed ;  and  there  is  another  of  the  same 
description  to  be  found  in  all  lives  of  Shakspeare, 
which  we  will  expose  to  the  contempt  of  the  reader 
whilst  we  are  in  this  field  of  discussion,  that  we  may 
not  afterwards  have  to  resume  so  disgusting  a  subject. 

This  poet,  who  was  a  model  of  gracious  benignity 
in  his  manners,  and  of  whom,  amidst  our  general  igno- 
rance, thus  much  is  perfectly  established,  that  the 
term  gentle  vras  almost  as  generally  and  by  presorip- 
Vive  right  associated  with  his  name  as  the  affix  of 
venerable  with  Bede,  or  judicious  with  Hooker,  is 
alleged  to  have  insulted  a  friend  by  an  imaginary 
epitaph  beginning  '  Ten  in  the  Hundred,'  and  suppos- 
ing him  to  be  damned,  yet  without  wit  enough  (which 
■urely  the  Stratford  bellman  could  have  furnished)  foi 
ievising  any,  even  fanciful,  reason  for  such  a  supposi- 


S4  SHAKSFEAKE. 

tion ;  upon  which  the  comment  of  some  foolish  critic 
is,  '  The  sharpness  of  the  satire  is  said  to  have  stung 
the  man  so  much  that  he  never  forgave  it.'  "We  hav6 
heard  of  the  sting  in  the  tail  atoning  for  th'»  brainlesi 
head ;  but  in  this  doggerel  the  tail  is  surely  as  sting- 
less  as  the  head  is  brainless.  For,  \st.  Ten  in  the 
hundred  could  be  no  reproach  in  Shakspeare's  time, 
any  more  than  to  call  a  man  Three-and-a-half-per-cent. 
in  this  present  year,  1838  ;  except,  indeed,  amongst 
those  foolish  persons  who  built  their  morality  upon 
the  Jewish  ceremonial  law.  Shakspeare  himself  took 
ten  per  cent.  2dly.  It  happens  that  John  Combe,  so 
far  from  being  the  object  of  the  poet's  scurrility,  or 
viewing  the  poet  as  an  object  of  implacable  resentment, 
was  a  Stratford  friend ;  that  one  of  his  family  was 
aflfectionately  remembered  in  Shakspeare's  will  by  the 
bequest  of  his  sword  ;  and  that  John  Combe  himself 
recorded  his  perfect  charity  with  Shakspeare  by  leaving 
him  a  legacy  of  £5  sterling.  And  in  this  lies  the 
key  to  the  whole  story.  For,  3dly,  The  four  lines 
were  written  and  printed  before  Shakspeare  was  bom. 
The  name  Combe  is  a  common  one  ;  and  some  stupid 
fellow,  \^ho  had  seen  the  name  in  Shakspeare's  will, 
and  happened  also  to  have  seen  the  lines  in  a  collection 
)f  epigrams,  chose  to  connect  the  cases  by  attributing 
in  identity  to  the  two  John  Combe's,  though  at  wai 
with  chronology. 

Finali),  there  is  another  specimen  of  doggerel  at- 
tributed to  Shakspeare,  which  is  not  equally  unworthy 
of  him,  because  not  equally  malignant,  but  otherwise 
tqnaUy  below  his  intellect,  no  less  than  his  scholar. 
»hip ;  we  mean  the  inscription  on  his  gravestone 
This,  as  a  sort  of  siste  viator  appeal  to  future  sexton* 


SHAKSFEABE.  65 

i8  worthy  of  the  grave-digger  or  the  parish-clerk,  who 
was  probably  its  author.  Or  it  may  have  been  an 
antique  formula,  like  the  vulgar  record  of  ownership 
in  books :  — 

« Anthony  Timothy  Dolthead's  book, 
God  give  him  grace  therein  to  look.' 

Thus  far  the  matter  is  of  little  importance ;  and  it 
might  have  been  supposed  that  malignity  itself  could 
hardly  have  imputed  such  trash  to  Shakspeare.  But 
when  we  find,  even  in  this  short  compass,  scarcely 
wider  than  the  posy  of  a  ring,  room  found  for  traducing 
the  poet's  memory,  it  becomes  important  to  say,  that 
the  leading  sentiment,  the  hoJtr«.r  expressed  at  any  dis- 
turbance oflTered  to  his  bones,  is  not  one  to  whicn 
Shakspeare  could  have  attached  the  slightest  weight ; 
far  less  could  have  outraged  the  sanctities  of  place 
and  subject,  by  affixing  to  any  sentiment  whatever 
(and,  according  to  the  fiction  of  the  case,  his  farewell 
sentiment)  the  sanction  of  a  curse. 

FUial  veneration  and  piety  towards  the  memory  of 
this  great  man,  have  led  us  into  a  digression  that  might 
have  been  unseasonable  in  any  cause  less  weighty  than 
one,  having  for  its  object  to  deliver  his  honored  name 
from  a  load  of  the  most  brutal  malignity.  Never 
more,  we  hope  and  venture  to  believe,  will  any 
thoughtless  biographer  impute  to  Shakspeare  the  asi- 
nine doggerel  Avith  which  the  uncritical  blundering  of 
his  earliest  biographer  has  caused  his  name  to  be  dis- 
honored. We  now  resume  the  thread  of  our  biog- 
raphy. The  stream  of  history  is  cpnturies  in  working 
tself  clear  of  any  calumny  with  wiiich  it  has  ono« 
seen  polluted. 

5 


S6  SHAKSPEARE. 

Most  readers  will  be  aware  of  an  old  story,  accord- 
Sag  to  which  Shakspeare  gained  his  livelihood  for  some 
time  after  coming  to  London  by  holding  the  horses  o' 
those  who  rode  to  the  play.  This  legend  is  as  idle  aa 
any  one  of  those  which  we  have  just  exposed.  No 
custom  ever  existed  of  riding  on  horseback  to  the  play. 
Gentlemen,  who  rode  valuable  horses,  would  assuredly 
not  expose  them  systematically  to  the  injury  of  stand- 
ing exposed  to  cold  for  two  or  even  four  hours ;  and 
persons  of  inferior  rank  would  not  ride  on  horseback 
in  the  town.  Besides,  had  such  a  custom  ever  existed, 
stables  (or  sheds  at  least)  would  soon  have  arisen  to 
meet  the  public  wants ;  and  in  some  of  the  dramatic 
sketches  of  the  day,  which  noticed  every  fashion  as  it 
arose,  this  would  not  have  been  overlooked.  The 
r,tory  is  traced  originally  to  Sir  William  Davenant. 
Betterton  the  actor,  who  professed  to  have  received  it 
from  him,  passed  it  onwards  to  Rowe,  he  to  Pope, 
Pope  to  Bishop  Newton,  the  editor  of  MUton,  and 
Newton  to  Dr.  Johnson.  This  pedigree  of  the  fable, 
however,  adds  nothing  to  its  credit,  and  multiplies  tii« 
chances  of  some  mistake.  Another  fable,  not  much 
less  absurd,  represents  Shakspeare  as  having  from  the 
very  first  been  borne  upon  the  establishment  of  the 
theatre,  and  so  far  contradicts  the  other  fable,  but 
originally  in  the  very  humble  character  of  call-boy  or 
deputy  prompter,  whose  business  it  was  to  summon 
each  performer  according  to  his  order  of  coming  upon 
the  stage.  This  story,  however,  quite  as  much  as  the 
other,  is  irreconcilable  with  the  discovery  recently 
made  by  Mr.  Collier,  that  in  1589  Shakspeare  was  a 
^^areholder  in  the  important  property  of  a  principal 
London  theatre.     It  seems  destineil  tnat  all  the  un* 


SHAKSFISARE.  67 

ioubted  facts  of  Shakspeare's  life  should  come  to  ua 
through  the  channel  of  legal  documents,  which  are 
better  evidence  even  than  imperial  medals  ;  whilst,  on 
the  other  hand,  all  the  fabulous  anecdotes  not  having 
an  attorney's  seal  to  them,  seem  to  have  been  the 
fictions  of  the  wonder  maker.  The  plain  presumption 
from  the  record  of  Shakspeare's  situation  in  1589, 
coupled  with  the  fact  that  his  first  arrival  in  London 
was  possibly  not  until  1587,  but  according  to  the 
earliest  account  not  before  1586,  a  space  of  time  which 
leaves  but  little  room  for  any  remarkable  changes  of 
situation,  seems  to  be,  that,  either  in  requital  of  ser- 
vices done  to  the  players  by  the  poet's  family,  or  in 
consideration  of  money  advanced  by  his  father-in-law, 
or  on  account  of  Shakspeare's  personal  accomplish- 
ments as  an  actor,  and  as  an  adapter  of  dramatic 
works  to  the  stage  ;  for  one  of  these  reasons,  or  for  all 
of  them  united,  William  Shakspeare,  about  the  23d 
year  of  his  age,  was  adopted  into  the  partnership  of  a 
respectable  histrionic  company,  possessing  a  first-rate 
theatre  in  the  metropolis.  If  1586  were  the  year  in 
which  he  came  up  to  London,  it  seems  probable 
enough  that  his  immediate  motive  to  that  step  was  the 
increasing  distress  of  his  father ;  for  in  that  year  John 
Shakspeare  resigned  the  office  of  alderman.  There  is, 
however,  a  bare  possibility  that  Shakspeare  might  have 
gone  to  London  about  the  time  when  he  completed  his 
twenty-first  year,  that  is,  in  the  spring  of  1585,  but  not 
earlier.  Nearly  two  years  after  the  birth  of  his  eldest 
daughter  Susanna,  his  wife  lay  in  for  a  second  and  a 
last  t5.me ;  but  she  then  brought  her  husband  twins, 
a  son  and  a  daughter.  These  children  wore  baptized 
\n  Febiruary  of  the  year  1585  ,    so   that  Shakspeare's 


68  SHAKSFEASB. 

whole  family  of  three  children  were  bom  and  baptized 
two  months  before  he  completed  his  majority.  The 
twins  were  baptized  by  the  names  of  Hamnet  and 
Judith,  those  being  the  names  of  two  amongst  theii 
sponsors,  viz.,  Mr.  Sadler  and  his  wife.  Hamnet, 
which  is  a  remarkable  name  in  itself,  becomes  still 
more  so  from  its  resemblance  to  the  immortal  name  of 
Hamlet  i'  the  Dane  ;  it  was,  however,  the  real  baptis- 
mal name  of  Mr.  Sadler,  a  friend  of  Shakspeare's, 
about  fourteen  years  older  than  himself.  Shakspeare'i 
son  must  then  have  been  most  interesting  to  his  heart, 
both  as  a  twin  child  and  as  his  only  boy.  He  died  in 
1596,  when  he  was  about  eleven  years  old.  Both 
daughters  surv'ived  their  father ;  both  married ;  both 
left  issue,  and  thus  gave  a  chance  for  continuing  the 
succession  from  the  great  poet.  But  all  the  four 
grandchildren  died  without  offspring. 

Of  Shakspeare  personally,  at  least  of  Shakspeare 
the  man,  as  distinguished  from  the  author,  there 
remains  little  more  to  record.  Already  in  1592, 
Greene,  in  his  posthumous  Groat's-worth  of  Wit,  had 
expressed  the  earliest  vocation  of  Shakspeare  in  the 
following  sentence :  '  There  is  an  upstart  crow,  beau- 
tified with  our  feathers ;  in  his  own  conceit  the  only 
Shakscene  in  a  country  ! '  This  alludes  to  Shakspeare's 
office  of  recasting,  and  even  recomposing,  dramatic 
works,  so  as  to  fit  them  for  representation ;  and  Master 
Greene,  it  is  probable,  had  suffered  in  his  self-estima- 
tion, or  in  his  purse,  by  the  alterations  in  some  piece 
•if  his  own,  which  the  duty  of  Shakspeare  to  the  gen- 
eral interest  of  the  theatre  had  obliged  him  to  make. 
In  1 691  it  has  been  supposed  that  Shakspeare  wrote 
hi*  first  drama,  the  Two  acntlemen  of  Verona ;  th« 


SHAKSFEABE.  89 

east  characteristically  marked  of  all  his  plays,  and, 
Rrith  the  exception  of  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  the  least 
interesting. 

From  this  year,  1591,  to  that  of  1611,  are  jnrt 
twenty  years,  within  which  space  lie  the  whole  dra- 
matic creations  of  Shakspeare,  averaging  nearly  one  for 
every  six  months.  In  1611  was  written  the  Tempest, 
which  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  Izist  of  all  Shak- 
speare's  works.  Even  on  that  account,  as  Mr.  Camp- 
bell feelingly  observes,  it  has  '  a  sort  of  sacredness ; ' 
and  it  is  a  most  remarkable  fact,  and  one  calculated  to 
make  a  man  superstitious,  that  in  this  play  the  great 
enchanter  Prospero,  in  whom,  '  as  if  conscious,'  says 
Mr.  Campbell,  '  that  this  would  be  his  last  work,  the 
poet  has  been  inspired  to  typify  himsef  as  a  wise, 
potent,  and  benevolent  magician,'  of  whom,  indeed,  as 
of  Shakspeare  himself,  it  may  be  said,  that  '  within 
that  circle '  (the  circle  of  his  own  art)  '  none  durst 
tread  but  he,'  solemnly  and  forever  renounces  his  mys- 
terious functions,  symbolically  breaks  his  enchanter's 
wand,  and  declares  that  he  will  bury  his  books,  his 
science,  and  his  secrets, 

*  Deeper  than  did  ever  plammet  soand.' 

Nay,  it  is  even  ominous,  that  in  this  play,  and 
from  the  voice  of  Prospero,  issues  that  magnificent 
prophecy  of  the  total  destruction,  which  should  one  day 
•wallow  up 

•  The  solemn  temples,  the  great  globe  itself. 
Yea  all  which  it  inherit' 

A.nd  this  prophecy  's  foUowed  immediately  by  a  most 
(irofound  ejaculation,  gathering  into  one  pathetic  ab* 
itrnction  the  total  philosophy  of  life : 


70  SHAKSPUABE. 

*  We  are  such  staff 
As  dreams  are  made  of;  and  our  little  lift 
Is  rounded  by  a  sleep ; ' 

that  is,  in  effect,  our  life  is  a  little  tract  of  feveriah 
vigi.8,  surrounded  and  islanded  by  a  shoreless  ocean 
of  sleep  —  sleep  before  birth,  sleep  after  death. 

These  remarkable  passages  were  probably  not  unde- 
signed ;  but  if  we  suppose  them  to  have  been  thrown 
off  without  conscious  notice  of  their  tendencies,  then, 
according  to  the  superstition  of  the  ancient  Grecians, 
they  would  have  been  regarded  as  prefiguring  words, 
prompted  by  the  secret  genius  that  accompanies  every 
man,  such  as  insure  along  with  them  their  own  accom- 
plishment. With  or  without  intention,  however,  it  is 
believed  that  Shakspeare  wrote  nothing  more  after  this 
exquisite  romantic  drama.  With  respect  to  the  re- 
mainder of  his  personal  history.  Dr.  Drake  and  others 
have  supposed,  that  during  the  twenty  years  from  1591 
to  1611,  he  visited  Stratford  often,  and  latterly  once  a 
year. 

In  1589  he  had  possessed  some  share  in  a  theatre; 
in  1596  he  had  a  considerable  share.  Through  Lord 
Southampton,  as  a  surviving  friend  of  Lord  Essex,  who 
was  viewed  as  the  martyr  to  his  Scottish  politics,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  Shakspeare  had  acquired  the 
favor  of  James  L  ;  and  accordingly,  on  the  29th  of 
May,  1603,  about  two  months  after  the  king's  acces- 
sion to  the  throne  of  England,  a  patent  was  granted 
o  the  company  of  players  who  possessed  the  Globe 
theatre;  in  which  patent  Shakspeare's  name  stands 
second.  This  patent  raised  the  company  to  the  rank 
of  his  majesty's  servants,  whereas  previously  they  are 
nipposed  to  have  been  simply  the  servants  of  the  Lor» 


SHAKSi'JiAliK.  71 

Chamberlain.  Perhaps  it  was  in  gratefiJ  acknowledg- 
naent  of  this  royal  favor  that  Shakspeare  afterwards,  in 
1606,  paid  that  sublime  compliment  to  the  house  of 
Stuart,  which  is  involved  in  the  vision  shown  to  Mac- 
beth. This  vision  is  managed  with  exquisite  skill.  It 
was  impossible  to  display  the  whole  series  of  princes 
from  Macbeth  to  James  I.  ;  but  he  beholds  the  poster- 
ity of  Banquo,  one  '  gold-bound  brow '  succeeding  to 
another,  until  he  comes  to  an  eighth  apparition  of  a 
Scottish  king, 

•  Who  bears  a  glass 
Which  shows  him  many  more;  and  some  he  sees 
Who  twofold  balls  and  treble  sceptres  carry; ' 

vhus  bringing  down  without  tedium  the  long  succession 
to  the  very  person  of  James  I.,  by  the  symbolic  image 
of  the  two  crowns  united  on  one  head. 

About  the  beginning  of  the  century  Shakspeare  had 
become  rich  enough  to  purchase  the  best  house  in 
Stratford,  called  The  Great  House,  which  name  he 
altered  to  New  Place ;  and  in  1602  he  bought  one 
hundred  and  seven  acres  adjacent  to  this  house  for  a 
sum  (£320)  corresponding  to  about  1500  guineas  of 
modern  money.  Malone  thinks  that  he  purchased  the 
house  as  early  as  1597  ;  and  it  is  certain  that  about 
that  time  he  was  able  to  assist  his  father  in  obtaining  t 
renewed  grant  of  arms  from  the  Herald's  College,  and 
therefore,  of  course,  to  re-establish  his  father's  for- 
tunes. Ten  years  of  a  well-directed  industry,  viz., 
from  1591  to  1601,  and  the  prosperity  of  the  theatre 
in  which  he  was  a  proprietor,  had  raised  him  to  affiu- 
ence ;  and  after  another  ten  years,  improved  with  the 
■ame  success,  he  was  able  to  retire  with  an  income  of 
£300,  or  (according  to  the  customary  computations^  in 


12  SHAKSP£ABK. 

modern  money  of  £1500,  per  annum.  Sliakspeare 
was  in  fact  the  first  man  of  letters,  Pope  the  second, 
and  Sir  Walter  Scott  the  third,  who,  in  Great  Britain, 
aas  ever  realized  a  large  fortune  by  literature ;  or  in 
Christendom,  if  we  except  Voltaire,  and  two  dubious 
cases  in  Italy.  The  four  or  five  latter  years  of  his  life 
Shakspeare  passed  in  dignified  ease,  in  profound  medi- 
tation, we  may  be  sure,  and  in  universal  respect,  at  his 
native  town  of  Stratford;  and  there  he  died,  on  the 
23d  of  April,  1616.'8 

His  daughter  Susanna  had  been  married  on  the  5th 
of  June  of  the  year  1607,  to  Dr.  John  Hall,'^  a  phy- 
sician in  Stratford.  The  doctor  died  in  November, 
1635,  aged  sixty;  his  wife,  at  the  age  of  sixty-six,  on 
July  11,  1640.  They  had  one  child,  a  daughter, 
named  Elizabeth,  born  in  1608,  married  April  22, 
1626,  to  Thomas  Nash,  Esq.,  left  a  widow  in  1647, 
and  subsequently  remarried  to  Sir  John  Barnard  ;  but 
this  Lady  Barnard,  the  sole  grand-daughter  of  the 
poet,  had  no  children  by  either  marriage.  The  other 
daughter,  Judith,  on  February  10,  1616,  (about  ten 
weeks  before  her  father's  death,)  married  Mr,  Thomas 
Quiney  of  Stratford,  by  whom  she  had  three  sons, 
Shakspeare,  Richard,  and  Thomas.  Judith  was  about 
thirty-one  years  old  at  the  time  of  her  marriage  ;  and 
living  just  forty-six  years  afterwards,  she  died  in 
February,  1662,  at  the  age  of  seventy-seven.  Her 
three  sons  died  without  issue  ;  and  thus,  in  the  direct 
lineal  descent,  it  is  certain  that  no  representative  has 
Burvived  of  this  transcendent,  poet,  the  most  august 
wnongst  created  intellects. 

After  this  review  of  Shakspeare's  life,  it  becomea 
•ur  duty  to  take  a  summary  survey  of  his  works,  o 


SHAKSFEARE.  79 

his  intellectual  powers,  and  of  his  station  in.  literature, 
a  station  wLich  is  now  irrevocably  settled,  not  so  much 
(which  happens  in  other  cases)  by  a  vast  overbalance 
of  favorable  suffrages  as  by  acclamation  ;  not  so  much 
by  the  voices  of  those  who  admire  him  up  to  the  veige 
of  idolatry,  as  by  the  acts  of  those  who  everywhere 
seek  for  his  works  among  the  primal  necessities  of 
life,  demand  them,  and  crave  them  as  they  do  their 
daily  bread  ;  not  so  much  by  eulogy  openly  proclaim- 
ing itself,  as  by  the  silent  homage  recorded  in  the 
endless  multiplication  of  what  he  has  bequeathed  us  ; 
not  so  much  by  his  own  compatriots,  who,  with  regard 
to  almost  every  other  author,20  compose  the  total 
amount  of  his  effective  audience,  as  by  the  unanimous 
'  all  hail ! '  of  intellectual  Christendom ;  finally,  not 
by  the  hasty  partisanship  of  his  own  generation,  nor  by 
the  biassed  judgment  of  an  age  trained  in  the  same 
modes  of  feeling  and  of  thinking  with  himself,  —  but  by 
the  solemn  award  of  generation  succeeding  to  genera- 
tion, of  one  age  correcting  the  obliquities  or  peculiari- 
ties of  another ;  by  the  verdict  of  two  hundred  and 
thirty  years,  which  have  now  elapsed  since  the  very 
latest  of  his  creations,  or  of  two  hundred  and  forty- 
i.jven  years  if  we  date  from  the  earliest ;  a  verdict 
which  has  been  continually  revived  and  re-opened, 
probed,  searched,  vexed  by  criticism  in  every  spirit, 
from  the  most  genial  and  intelligent,  down  to  the  most 
malignant  and  scurrilously  hostile  which  feeble  heads 
wid  great  ignorance  could  suggest  when  cooperating 
w-th  impure  hearts  and  narrow  sensibilities  ;  a  verdict, 
In  short,  sustained  and  countersigned  by  a  longer  series 
of  writers,  many  of  them  eminent  fcr  wit  or  learning, 
than  were   ever  before  congregated  upon  any  inquest 


14  SHAKSFEAKE. 

relating  to  any  author,  be  he  who  he  might,  ancient  '* 
or  modern,  Pagan  or  Christian.  It  was  a  most  witty 
laying  with  respect  to  a  piratical  and  knavish  publisher 
who  made  a  trade  of  insulting  the  memories  of  de- 
ceased authors  by  forged  writings,  that  he  was  '  among 
the  new  terrors  of  death.'  But  in  the  gravest  sense  it 
may  be  affirmed  of  Shakspeare,  that  he  is  among  the 
modern  luxuries  of  life  ;  that  life,  in  fact,  is  a  new 
thing,  and  one  more  to  be  coveted,  since  Shakspeare 
has  extended  the  domains  of  human  consciousness, 
and  pushed  its  dark  frontiers  into  regions  not  so  much 
as  dimly  descried  or  even  suspected  before  hifi  time, 
far  less  illuminated  (as  now  they  are)  by  beauty  and 
tropical  luxuriance  of  life.  For  instance,  —  a  single 
instance,  indeed  one  which  in  itself  is  a  world  of  new 
revelation,  —  the  possible  beauty  of  the  female  char- 
acter had  not  been  seen  as  in  a  dream  before  Shak- 
speare called  into  perfect  life  the  radiant  shapes  of 
Desdemona,  of  Imogene,  of  Hermione,  of  Perdita,  of 
Ophelia,  of  Miranda,  and  many  others.  The  Una  of 
Spenser,  earlier  by  ten  or  fifteen  years  than  most  of 
these,  was  an  idealized  portrait  of  female  innocence 
and  virgin  purity,  but  too  shadowy  and  unreal  for  a 
dramatic  reality.  And  as  to  the  Grecian  classics,  let 
not  the  reader  imagine  for  an  instant  that  any  prototype 
in  this  field  of  Shakspearian  power  can  be  looked  for 
there.  The  Antigone  and  the  Electra  of  the  tragic 
poets  are  the  two  leading  female  characters  that  classi- 
cal antiquity  offers  to  our  respect,  but  assuredly  not  to 
our  impassioned  love,  as  disciplined  and  exalted  in  tne 
Hchool  of  Shakspeare.  They  challenge  our  admiration, 
severe,  and  even  stern,  as  impersonations  of  filial  duty 
jleaving  to  the  steps  of  a  desolate  and  afflicted   olu 


SHAKSFEARE.  74 

man  ;  or  of  si&terly  affection,  maintaining  the  rights  of 
i  brother  under  circumstances  of  peril,  of  desertion, 
*nd  consequently  of  perfect  self-reliance.  Iphigenia, 
again,  though  not  dramatically  coming  before  us  in  her 
own  person,  but  according  to  the  beautiful  report  of  a 
spectator,  presents  us  with  a  fine  statuesque  model  of 
heroic  fortitude,  and  of  one  whose  young  heart,  even 
in  the  very  agonies  of  her  cruel  immolation,  refused  to 
forget,  by  a  single  indecorous  gestm-e,  or  so  much  as  a 
moment's  neglect  of  her  own  princely  descent,  and 
that  she  herself  was  '  a  lady  in  the  land.'  These  are 
fine  marble  groups,  but  they  are  not  the  warm  breath- 
ing realities  of  Shakspeare  ;  there  is  '  no  speculation  ' 
in  their  cold  marble  eyes  ;  the  breath  of  life  is  not  in 
their  nostrils  ;  the  fine  pulses  of  womanly  sensibilities 
are  not  throbbing  in  their  bosoms.  And  besides  this 
immeasurable  difference  between  the  cold  moony  re- 
flexes of  life,  as  exhibited  by  the  power  of  Grecian 
art,  and  the  true  sunny  life  of  Shakspeare,  it  must  be 
observed  that  the  Antigones,  &c.  of  the  antique  put 
forward  but  one  single  trait  of  character,  like  the  aloe 
with  its  single  blossom.  This  solitary  feature  is  pre- 
sented to  us  as  an  abstraction,  and  as  an  insulated 
quality ;  whereas  in  Shakspeare  all  is  presented  in  the 
concrete;  that  is  to  say,  not  brought  forward  in  relief, 
as  by  some  effort  of  an  anatomical  artist ;  but  em- 
bodied and  imbedded,  so  to  speak,  as  by  the  force  of  a 
creative  nature,  in  the  complex  system  of  a  human 
Ve :  a  life  in  which  all  tne  elements  move  and  play 
«imultaneously,  and  with  something  more  than  mere 
»imultaneity  or  co-existence,  acting  and  re-acting  each 
apon  the  other,  nay,  even  acting  by  each  other  and 
iirough  each  other.      In  Shakspeare's  characters  is  felt 


76  8HAK8FEABE. 

for  ever  a  real  organic  life,  where  each  is  for  th« 
whole  and  in  the  whole,  and  where  the  whole  is  fof 
each  and  in  each.     They  only  are  real  incarnations. 

The  Greek  poets  could  not  exhibit  any  approxima- 
tions to  female  character,  without  violating  the  truth  of 
Grecian  life,  and  shocking  the  feelings  of  the  audience. 
The  drama  with  the  Greeks,  as  with  us,  though  much 
less  than  with  us,  was  a  picture  of  human  life  ;  and 
that  which  could  not  occur  in  life  could  not  wisely  be 
exhibited  on  the  stage.  Now,  in  ancient  Greece, 
women  were  secluded  from  the  society  of  men.  The 
conventual  sequestration  of  the  ywaixwrint,  or  female 
apartment*^  of  the  house,  and  the  Mahommedau  con- 
secration of  its  threshold  against  the  ingress  of  males, 
had  been  transplanted  from  Asia  into  Greece  thousands 
of  years  perhaps  before  either  convents  or  Mahommed 
existed.  Thus  barred  from  all  open  social  intercourse, 
women  could  not  develope  or  express  any  character  by 
word  or  action.  Even  to  have  a  character,  violated,  to 
a  Grecian  mind,  the  ideal  portrait  of  feminine  excel- 
lence ;  whence,  perhaps,  partly  the  too  generic,  too 
ittle  individualized,  style  of  Grecian  beauty.  But 
prominently  to  express  a  character  was  impossible 
under  the  common  tenor  of  Grecian  life,  unless  when 
»igh  tragical  catastrophes  transcended  the  decorums  of 
ihat  tenor,  or  for  a  brief  interval  raised  the  curtain 
which  veiled  it.  Hence  the  subordinate  part  which 
Bremen  play  upon  the  Greek  stage  in  all  but  some  hall 
iozen  cases,  In  the  paramount  tragedy  on  that  stage, 
<he  model  tragedy,  the  CEdipus  Tyrannus  of  Sophocles, 
thee  is  virtually  no  woman  at  all ;  for  Jocasta  is  s 
party  In:  the  story  merely  as  the  dead  Laius  or  the  self- 
murdered  Sphijvx  was  a  party,  viz.,  by  her  contribu 


8nAKSPEAB£.  7) 

ions  to  the  fatalities  of  the  event,  not  by  anything  she 
ioes  or  says  spontaneously.  In  fact,  the  Greek  poet, 
Lf  a  wise  poet,  could  not  address  himself  genially  to  a 
task  in  which  he  must  begin  by  shocking  the  sensibili- 
ties of  his  countrymen.  And  hence  followed,  not  only 
the  dearth  of  female  characters  in  the  Grecian  drama, 
but  also  a  second  result  still  more  favorable  to  the  i.ev: 
of  a  new  power  evolved  by  Shakspeare.  Whenevc 
the  common  law  of  Grecian  life  did  give  way,  it  was, 
as  we  have  observed,  to  the  suspending  force  of  some 
great  convulsion  or  tragical  catastrophe.  This  for  a 
moment  (like  an  earthquake  in  a  nunnery)  would  set 
at  liberty  even  the  timid,  fluttering  Grecian  women, 
those  doves  of  the  dove-cot,  and  would  call  some  of 
them  into  action.  But  which  ?  Precisely  those  of 
energetic  and  masculine  minds ;  the  timid  and  femi- 
iiine  would  but  shrink  the  more  from  public  gaze  and 
from  tumult.  Thus  it  happened,  that  such  female 
characters  as  were  exhibited  in  Greece,  could  not  but 
be  the  harsh  and  the  severe.  If  a  gentle  Ismene 
appeared  for  a  moment  in  contest  with  some  energetic 
iister  Antigone,  (and,  chiefly,  perhaps,  by  way  of  draw- 
.•ng  out  the  fiercer  character  of  that  sister,)  she  was 
soon  dismissed  as  unfit  for  scenical  effect.  So  that  not 
only  were  female  characters  few,  but,  moreover,  of 
hese  few  the  majority  were  but  repetitions  of  mascu- 
Ine  qualities  in  female  persons.  Female  agency  being 
leldom  summoned  on  the  stage,  except  when  it  had 
"eceived  a  sort  of  special  dispensation  from  its  sexual 
*haracter,  by  some  terrific  convulsions  of  the  house 
»r  the  city,  naturally  it  assumed  the  style  of  action 
■uited  to  these  circumstances.  And  hence  it  arose, 
that  not  woman  as  she  differed  from  man,  but  woman 


78  SHAKSP£AR£. 

as  she  resembled  man  —  woman,  in  short,  seen  under 
Dircumstances  so  dreadful  as  to  abolish  the  effect  of 
Bexual  distinction,  was  the  woman  of  the  Greek  tra- 
gedy.23  And  hence  generally  arose  for  Shakspeare 
the  wider  field,  and  the  more  astonishing  by  its  perfect 
novelty,  when  he  first  introduced  female  characters, 
not  as  mere  varieties  or  echoes  of  masculine  charac- 
ters, a  Medea  or  Clytemnestra,  or  a  vindictive  Hecuba, 
the  mere  tigress  of  the  tragic  tiger,  but  female  charac- 
ters that  had  the  appropriate  beauty  of  female  nature ; 
woman  no  longer  grand,  terrific,  and  repulsive,  but 
woman  '  after  her  kind '  —  the  other  hemisphere  of 
the  dramatic  world  ;  woman,  running  through  the  vast 
gamut  of  womanly  loveliness  ;  woman,  as  emancipated, 
exalted,  ennobled,  under  a  new  law  of  Christian  mo- 
rality ;  woman,  the  sister  and  coequal  of  man,  no 
longer  his  slave,  his  prisoner,  and  sometimes  his  rebel. 
'It  is  a  far  cry  to  Loch  Awe; '  and  from  the  Athe- 
nian stage  to  the  stage  of  Shakspeare,  it  may  be  said, 
is  a  prodigious  interval.  True;  but  prodigious  as  it 
is,  there  is  really  nothing  between  them.  The  Roman 
stage,  at  least  the  tragic  stage,  as  is  well  known,  was 
put  out,  as  by  an  extinguisher,  by  the  cruel  amphithe- 
atre, just  as  a  candle  is  made  pale  and  ridiculous  by 
iaylight.  Those  who  were  fresh  from  the  real  mur- 
uers  of  the  bloody  amphitheatre  regarded  with  con- 
tempt the  mimic  murders  of  the  stage.  Stimulation  too 
coarse  and  too  intense  had  its  usual  effect  in  making 
he  sensibilities  callous.  Christian  emperors  arose 
lit  length,  who  abolished  the  amphitheatre  in  its 
bloodier  features.  But  by  that  time  the  genius  of  the 
tragic  muse  had  long  slept  the  sleep  of  death.  And 
hat  muse  had  nc  resurrection  until  the  age  of  Shak 


SHAKSFKAR£.  79 

ipeare.  So  that,  notwithstanding  a  gulf  of  nineteen 
centuries  and  upwards  separates  Shakspeare  from  Euri- 
pides, the  last  of  the  surviving  Greek  tragedians,  tha 
one  is  still  the  nearest  successor  of  the  other,  just  as 
Connaught  and  the  islands  in  Clew  Bay  are  next 
neighbors  to  America,  although  three  thousand  watery 
columns,  each  of  a  cubic  mile  in  dimensions,  divide 
them  from  each  oiher. 

A  second  reason,  which  lends  an  emphasis  of  novelty 
and  effective  power  to  Shakspeare's  female  world,  is  a 
peculiar  fact  of  contrast  which  exists  between  that  and 
his  corresponding  world  of  men.  Let  us  explain.  The 
purpose  and  the  intention  of  the  Grecian  stage  was  not 
primarily  to  develope  human  character,  whether  in 
men  or  in  women  :  human  fates  were  its  object ;  great 
ti'agic  situations  under  the  mighty  control  of  a  vast 
cloudy  destiny,  dimly  descried  at  intervals,  and  brood- 
ing over  human  life  by  mysterious  agencies,  and  for 
mysterious  ends.  Man,  no  longer  the  representative  of 
an  august  vnll,  man,  the  passion-puppet  of  fate,  could 
not  with  any  effect  display  what  we  call  a  character, 
which  is  a  distinction  between  man  and  man,  ema- 
nating originally  from  the  will,  and  expressing  its 
determinations,  moving  under  the  large  variety  of 
human  impulses.  The  will  is  the  central  pivot  of 
character ;  and  this  was  obliterated,  thwarted,  can- 
celled by  the  dark  fatalism  which  brooded  over  the 
Grecian  stage.  That  explanation  will  sufficiently  clear 
np  the  reason  why  marked  or  complex  variety  of  char- 
acter was  slighted  by  the  great  principles  of  the  Greek 
tragody.  And  every  scholar  who  has  studied  that 
gr8i\d  drama  of  Greece  with  feeling, — that  drama, 
IM)  magnificent,  so  regal,   so  stately,  —  and  who  hsM 


80  SHAKSPEAKE. 

thou2[htfully  investigated  its  principles,  and  its  differ- 
ence from  tlie  English  drama,  will  acknowledge  tha* 
powerful  and  elaborate  character,  character,  for  in- 
stance, that  could  employ  the  fiftieth  part  of  that  pro- 
found analysis  which  has  been  applied  to  Hamlet 
to  Falstaff,  to  Lear,  to  Othello,  and  applied  by  Mrs. 
Jamieson  so  admirably  to  the  full  development  of  the 
Shakspearian  heroines,  would  have  been  as  much 
wasted,  nay,  would  have  been  defeated,  and  interrupted 
the  blind  agencies  of  fate,  just  in  the  same  way  as  i' 
would  injure  the  shadowy  grandeur  of  a  ghost  to  indi- 
vidualize it  too  much.  Milton's  angels  are  slightly 
touched,  superficially  touched,  with  differences  of 
character  ;  but  they  are  such  difierences,  so  simple 
and  general,  as  are  just  sufficient  to  rescue  them  from 
the  reproach  applied  to  Virgil's  '■fortemque  Gyan,  for- 
temque  Cloanthem  ;  '  just  sufficient  to  make  them  know- 
able  apart.  Pliny  speaks  of  painters  who  painted 
in  one  or  two  colors ;  and,  as  respects  the  angelic 
characters,  Milton  does  so  ;  he  is  monochromatic.  So, 
and  for  reasons  resting  upon  the  same  ultimate  philoso- 
uhy,  were  the  mighty  architects  of  the  Greek  tragedy. 
They  also  were  monochromatic  ;  they  also,  as  to  the 
characters  of  their  persons,  painted  in  one  color.  And 
80  far  there  might  have  been  the  same  novelty  in  Shak- 
peare's  men  as  in  his  women.  There  might  have  been , 
but  the  reason  why  there  is  not  must  be  sought  in 
the  fact,  that  History,  the  muse  of  History,  had  there 
even  been  no  such  muse  as  Melpomene,  would  have 
forced  us  into  an  acquaintance  with  human  charac- 
lor.  History,  as  the  representative  of  actual  life,  of 
real  man,  gives  us  powerful  delineations  of  charactei 
n  itg  chief  agents,  that  is,  in  men ;  and  therefore  i» 


SHAKSPEARE.  81 

s  that  Shakspeare,  the  absolute  creatoi  of  femali 
character,  was  but  the  mightiest  of  all  painte-s  with 
regard  to  male  character.  Take  a  single  instance.  The 
Antony  of  Shakspeare,  immortal  for  its  execution, 
is  found,  after  all,  as  regards  the  primary  conception, 
in  history.  Shakspeare's  delineation  is  but  the  expan- 
sion of  the  germ  already  preexisting,  by  way  of 
scattered  fragments,  in  Cicero's  Philippics,  in  Cicero's 
Letters,  in  Appian,  &c.  But  Cleopatra,  equally  fine, 
is  a  pure  creation  of  art.  The  situation  and  the  scenic 
circumstances  belong  to  history,  but  the  character  bts- 
longs  to  Shakspeare. 

In  the  great  world,  therefore,  of  woman,  as  the 
interpreter  of  the  shifting  phases  and  the  lunar  varie- 
ties of  that  mighty  changeable  planet,  that  lovely 
satellite  of  man,  Shakspeare  stands  not  the  first  only, 
not  the  original  only,  but  is  yet  the  sole  authentic 
oracle  of  truth.  Woman,  therefore,  the  beauty  of  the 
female  mind,  this  is  one  great  field  of  his  power.  The 
supernatural  world,  the  world  of  apparitions,  that  is 
another.  For  reasons  which  it  would  be  easy  to  give, 
reasons  emanating  from  the  gross  mythology  of  the 
ancients,  no  Grecian,^'*  no  Roman,  could  have  con- 
ceived a  ghost.  That  shadowy  conception,  the  pro- 
testing apparition,  the  awful  projection  of  the  human 
conscience,  belongs  to  the  Christian  mind.  And  in  all 
Christendom,  who,  let  us  ask,  who,  who  but  Shakspeare 
has  found  the  power  for  effectually  working  this  mys- 
terious mode  of  being  ?  In  summoning  back  to  earth 
'  the  majesty  of  bured  Denmark,'  how  like  an  awful 
•ecromancer  does  Shakspeare  appear  I  All  the  pomps 
4nd  grandeurs  which  relig"'on,  which  the  grave,  wliich 
flie  popular  superstition  had  gathered  about  the  subject 
6 


S2  shakspsa.se. 

of  apparitions,  are  here  converted  to  his  purpose,  and 
bend  to  one  awful  effect.  The  wormy  grave  brought 
into  antagonism  with  the  scenting  of  the  early  dawn  ; 
the  trumpet  of  resurrection  suggested,  and  again  as  an 
antagonist  idea  to  the  crowing  of  the  cock,  (a  bird 
ennobled  in  the  Christian  mythus  by  the  peirt  he  is 
made  to  play  at  the  Crucifixion ;)  its  starting  '  as  a 
guilty  thing '  placed  in  opposition  to  its  maj  estic  ex- 
pression of  offended  dignity  when  struck  at  by  the 
partisans  of  the  sentinels  ;  its  awful  allusions  to  the 
secrets  of  its  prison-house  ;  its  ubiquity,  contrasted 
with  its  local  presence ;  its  aerial  substance,  yet 
clothed  in  palpable  armor  ;  the  heart-shaking  solemnity 
of  its  language,  and  the  appropriate  scenery  of  its 
haunt,  viz.,  the  ramparts  of  a  capital  fortress,  with  no 
witnesses  but  a  few  gentlemen  mounting  guard  a*;  the 
dead  of  night,  —  what  a  mist,  what  a  mirage  of  vapor, 
is  here  accumulated,  through  which  the  dreadful  being 
in  the  centre  looms  upon  us  in  far  larger  proportions, 
than  could  have  happened  had  it  been  insulated  and 
left  naked  of  this  circumstantial  pomp  !  In  the  Tem- 
pest, again,  what  new  modes  of  life,  preternatural,  yel 
'"ar  as  the  poles  from  the  spiritualities  of  religion ! 
Ariel  in  antithesis  to  Caliban  !  What  is  most  ethereal 
to  what  is  most  animal!  A  phantom  of  air,  an 
abstraction  of  the  dawn  and  of  vesper  sun-lights,  a 
bodiless  sylph  on  the  one  hand  ;  on  the  other  a  gross 
carnal  monster,  like  the  Miltonic  Asmodai,  '  the  flesh- 
liest incubus '  among  the  fiends,  and  yet  so  far  enno- 
bled into  interest  by  his  intellectual  power,  and  by 
the  grandeur  of  misanthropy  !  ^^  In  the  Midsummer' 
Night'*  Dream,  again,  we  have  the  old  traditiona' 
'axrj  9  lovely  mode  of  preternatural  life,  remodifie<f 


SHAKSPEABE.  83 

t>y  Shakspeare's  eternal  talisman.  Oberon  and  Titania 
remind  ua  at  first  glance  of  Ariel.  They  approach, 
but  how  far  they  recede.  They  are  like  —  '  like,  but, 
jh,  how  different !  '  And  in  no  other  exhibition  of 
this  dreamy  population  of  the  moonlight  forests  and 
forest-lawns,  are  the  circumstantial  proprieties  of  fairy 
life  so  exquisitely  imagined,  sustained,  or  expressed. 
The  dialogue  between  Oberon  and  Titania  is,  of  itself 
and  taken  separately  from  its  connection,  one  of  the 
most  delightful  poetic  scenes  that  literature  afibrds. 
The  witches  in  Macbeth  are  another  variety  of  super- 
natural life,  in  which  Shakspeare's  power  to  enchant 
and  to  disenchant  are  alike  portentous.  The  circum- 
stances of  the  blasted  heath,  the  army  at  a  distance, 
the  withered  attire  of  the  mysterious  hags,  and  the 
choral  litanies  of  their  fiendish  Sabbath,  ai'e  as  finely 
imagined  in  their  kind  as  those  which  herald  and 
which  surround  the  ghost  in  Hamlet.  There  we  see 
the  positive  of  Shakspeare's  superior  power.  But  now 
turn  and  look  to  the  negative.  At  a  time  when 
the  trials  of  witches,  the  royal  book  on  demonology, 
fcnd  popular  superstition  (all  so  far  useful,  as  they  pre- 
pared a  basis  of  undoubting  faith  for  the  poet's  serious 
use  of  such  agencies)  had  degraded  and  polluted  the 
ideas  of  these  mysterious  beings  by  many  mean  asso- 
ciations, Shakspeare  does  not  fear  to  employ  them  in 
high  tragedy,  (a  tragedy  moreover  which,  though  not 
the  very  greatest  of  his  efforts  as  an  intellectual  whole, 
nor  as  a  struggle  of  passion,  is  among  the  greatest  in 
&ny  view,  and  positively  tke  greatest  for  sccnical  gran- 
de\ir,  and  in  that  respect  makes  the  nearest  approach 
»f  all  English  tragedies  to  the  Grecian  model ;)  he 
does  not  fear  to  introduce,  for  the  same  appalling  effect 


84  SHAKSPEASS. 

as  that  for  which  ^Sschylus  introduced  the  Eumenides, 
X  triad  of  old  women,  concerning  whom  an  Englieh 
wit  has  remarked  this  grotesque  peculiarity  in  the 
popular  creed  of  that  day,  —  that  although  potent  over 
winds  and  storms,  in  league  with  powers  of  darkness, 
they  yet  stood  in  awe  of  the  constable,  —  yet  relying 
on  his  own  supreme  power  to  disenchant  as  well  as  to 
enchant,  to  create  and  to  uncreate,  he  mixes  these 
women  and  their  dark  machineries  with  the  power  of 
armies,  with  the  agencies  of  kings,  and  the  fortunes  of 
martial  kingdoms.  Such  was  the  sovereignty  of  this 
poet,  so  mighty  its  compass  ! 

A  third  fund  of  Shakspeare's  peculiar  power  lies  in 
his  teeming  fertility  of  fine  thoughts  and  sentiments. 
From  his  works  alone  might  be  gathered  a  golden 
bead-roll  of  thoughts  the  deepest,  subtilest,  most 
pathetic,  and  yet  most  catholic  and  universally  intelli- 
gible ;  the  most  characteristic,  also,  and  appropriate  to 
the  particular  person,  the  situation,  and  the  case,  yet, 
at  the  same  time,  applicable  to  the  circumstances  of 
every  human  being,  under  all  the  accidents  of  life,  and 
all  vicissitudes  of  fortune.  But  this  subject  ofiers  so 
vast  a  field  of  observation,  it  being  so  eminently  the 
prerogative  of  Shakspeare  to  have  thought  more  finely 
and  more  extensively  than  all  other  poets  combined, 
that  we  cannot  wrong  the  dignity  of  such  a  theme  by 
doing  more,  in  our  narrow  limits,  than  simply  no- 
ticing it  as  one  of  the  emblazonries  upon  Shakspeare's 
ihield. 

Fourthly,  we  shall  indicate  (and,  as  in  the  last  case, 
rarely  indicate,  without  attempting  in  so  vast  a  field  to 
offer  any  inadequate  illustrations)  one  mode  of  Shak> 
ipeare's   dramatic  excellence,  which  hitherto  lias  nof 


8HAKSPEABE.  85 

attiacted  any  special  or  separate  notice.  We  allude  to 
the  forms  of  life,  and  natural  human  pa&sion,  as  appar- 
ent in  the  structure  of  his  dialogue.  Among  the  many 
defects  and  infirmities  of  the  French  and  of  the  Italian 
drama,  indeed,  we  may  say  of  the  Greek,  the  dialogue 
proceeds  always  by  independent  speeches,  replying 
indeed  to  each  other,  but  never  modified  in  its  several 
openings  by  the  momentary  effect  of  its  several  termi- 
nal forms  immediately  preceding.  Now,  in  Shak- 
speare,  who  first  set  an  example  of  that  most  important 
innovation,  in  all  his  impassioned  dialogues,  each  reply 
or  rejoinder  seems  the  mere  rebound  of  the  previous 
speech.  Every  form  of  natural  interruption,  breaking 
through  the  restraints  of  ceremony  under  the  impulses 
of  tempestuous  passion ;  every  form  of  hasty  interro- 
gative, ardent  reiteration  when  a  question  has  been 
evaded  ;  every  form  of  scornful  repetition  of  the  hos- 
tile words  ;  every  impatient  continuation  of  the  hostile 
statement ;  in  short,  all  modes  and  formulae  by  which 
anger,  hurry,  fretfulness,  scorn,  impatience,  or  excite- 
ment under  any  movement  whatever,  can  disturb  or 
modify  or  dislocate  the  formal  bookish  style  of  com- 
mencement, —  these  are  as  rife  in  Shakspeare's  dia- 
logue as  in  life  itself;  and  how  much  vivacity,  how 
Drofound  a  verisimilitude,  they  add  to  the  scenic  efiect 
■8  an  imitation  of  human  passion  and  real  life,  we  need 
not  say.  A  volume  might  be  written,  illustrating  the 
vast  varieties  of  Shakspeare's  art  and  power  in  this  one 
field  of  improvement ;  another  volume  might  be  dedi- 
cated to  the  exposure  of  the  lifeless  and  unnaturaJ 
eftult  from  the  opposite  practice  in  the  foreign  stages 
of  France  and  Italy.  And  we  may  truly  say,  thai 
rere   Shakspeare   distinguished  from    them    by   thii 


60 


SHAKSFKABK. 


tingle  feature  of  nature  and  propriety,  he  would 
on  that  account  alone  have  merited  a  great  immor* 
tality. 

The  dramatic  works  of  Shakspeare  generally  ac« 
knowledged  to  be  genuine  consist  of  thirty-five  pieces. 
The  following  is  the  chronological  order  in  which  thej 
are  supposed  to  have  been  written,  according  to  Mr. 
Malone,  as  given  in  his  second  edition  of  Shak- 
speare, and  by  Mr.  George  Chalmers  in  his  Supple- 
mental Apology  for  the  Believers  in  the  Shakspeare 
Papers : 


1.  The  Comedy  of  Errors, 

2.  Love's  Labor's  Lost, 

3.  Romeo  and  Juliet, 

4.  Henry  VI.,  the  First  Part, 

5.  Henry  VI.,  the  Second  Part, 

6.  Henry  VI.,  the  Third  Part, 

7.  The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona, 

8.  Richard  m., 

9.  Richard  II., 
10    The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor, 

11.  Henry  IV.,  the  First  Part, 

12.  Henry  IV.,  the  Second  Part, 

13.  Henry  v., 

14.  Merchant  of  Venice, 

15.  Hamlet, 

16.  King  John, 

17.  A  Midsummer-Night's  Dream, 

18.  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew, 

19.  AU's  Well  that  Ends  Well, 

20.  Much  Ado  about  Nothing, 

21.  4fl  You  Like  It, 


Chalmers. 

Malone. 

1591 

1592 

1592 

1594 

1592 

1596 

1593 

1589 

1595 

1591 

1595 

1591 

,  1595 

1591 

1596 

1593 

1596 

1593 

1596 

1601 

1597 

1597 

1597 

1599 

1597 

1699 

1597 

1594 

1598 

1600 

1598 

159** 

1598 

1594 

1599 

1596 

1599 

1606 

1599 

1600 

1602 

1599 

SHAKSFBABE.  97 


Chalmers. 

Malon«. 

82. 

TroiluB  and  Creasida, 

1610 

1502 

23. 

Timon  of  Athens, 

1611 

1610 

24. 

The  Winter's  Tale, 

1601 

1611 

25. 

Measure  for  Measure, 

1604 

1603 

26. 

King  Lear, 

1605 

1605 

27. 

Cymbeline, 

1606 

1609 

28. 

Macbeth, 

1606 

1606 

29. 

Julius  Caesar, 

1607 

1607 

30. 

Antony  and  Cleopatra, 

1608 

1608 

31. 

CoriolanuB, 

1609 

1610 

32. 

The  Tempest, 

1613 

1611 

33. 

The  Twelfth  Night, 

1613 

1607 

34. 

Henry  VIII., 

1613 

1603 

35. 

Othello, 

1614 

1604 

Pericles  and  Titus  Andronicus,  although  inserted  in 
all  the  late  editions  of  Shakspeare's  Plays,  are  omitted 
in.  the  above  list,  both  by  Malone  and  Chalmers,  as  not 
being  Shakspeare's. 

The  first  edition  of  the  Works  was  published  in 
1623,  in  a  folio  volume  entitled  Mr.  William  Shak- 
speare's Comedies,  Histories,  and  Tragedies.  The 
second  edition  was  published  in  1632,  the  third  in 
1664,  and  the  fourth  in  1685,  all  in  folio;  but  the 
edition  of  1623  is  considered  the  most  authentic. 
Rowe  published  an  edition  in  seven  vols.  8vo,  in  1 709. 
Editions  were  published  by  Pope,  in  six  vols.  4to,  in 
1725;  by  Warburton,  in  eight  vols.  8vo,  in  1747;  by 
Dr.  Johnson,  in  eight  vols.  8vo,  in  1765  ;  by  Stevens, 
ji  four  vols.  8vo,  m  1766  ;  by  Malone,  in  ten  vols.  8vo, 
m  1789;  by  Alexander  Chalmers,  in  nine  vols.  8vo,  in 
1811  ;  by  Johnson  and  Steevens,  revised  by  Isaac 
QLeed,  in  twenty-one  vols.  8vo,  in  1813;  and  the  Plays 


88  SHAKSFEAKE. 

and  Poems,  with  notes  by  Malone,  were  edited  bj 
James  Boswell,  and  published  in  twenty-one  vols.  8vo, 
in  1821.  Besides  these,  numerous  editions  have  been 
publifihed  from  time  to  time. 


LIFE    OF   MILTOlSr. 


PREFATORY    MEMORANDA. 

1.  This  sketch  of  Milton's  life  was  written*  to  meet  the 
hasty  demand  of  a  powerful  association  (then  in  full  activity) 
for  organizing  a  systematic  movement  towards  the  improvement 
of  popular  reading.  The  limitations,  as  regarded  space,  which 
this  association  found  itself  obliged  to  impose,  put  an  end  to  all 
hopes  that  any  opening  could  be  found  in  this  case  for  an  im- 
proved life  as  regarded  research  into  the  facts,  and  the  true 
interpretation  of  facts.  These,  though  often  scandalously  false, 
scandalously  misconstructed  even  where  true  in  the  letter  of  the 
narrative,  and  read  by  generations  of  biographers  in  an  odious 
spirit  of  malignity  to  Milton,  it  was  nevertheless  a  mere 
necessity,  silently  and  acquiescingly,  to  adopt  in  a  case  where 
any  noticeable  change  would  call  for  a  justification,  and  any 
adequate  justification  would  call  for  much  ampler  space.  Under 
these  circumstances,  finding  myself  cut  off  from  one  mode  of  ser- 
vice*^  to  the  suffering  reputation  of  this  greatest  among  men,  it 
occurred,  naturally,  that  I  might  imperfectly  compensate  that 
defect  by  service  of  the  same  character  applied  in  a  different 
direction.  Facts,  falsely  stated  or  maliciously  colored,  require, 
too  frec^uently,  elaborate  details  for  their  exposure  :  but  tran- 
sient opinions,  or  solemn  judgments,  or  insinuations  dexterously 
applied  to  openings  made  by  vagueness  of  statement  or  laxity  of 
language,  it  is  possible  oftentimes  to  face  and  dissipate  instan- 


90  LIFE    OF    MILTON. 

taneously  by  a  single  word  of  seasonable  distinction,  or  bv  a 
simple  rectification  of  the  logic.  Sometimes  a  solitary  whisper, 
suggesting  a  fact  that  had  been  overlooked,  or  a  logical  relation 
that  had  been  wilfully  darkened,  is  found  sufficient  for  the  tri- 
umphant overthrow  of  a  scoff  that  has  corroded  Milton's  memory 
for  three®  generations.  Accident  prevented  me  from  doing 
much  even  in  this  line  for  the  exposure  of  Mlton's  injuries: 
hereafter  I  hope  to  do  more ;  but  in  the  mean  time  I  call  the 
reader's  attention  to  one  such  rectification  applied  by  myself  to 
the  effectual  prostration  of  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson,  the  worst 
enemy  that  IMilton  and  his  great  cause  have  ever  been  called  on 
to  confront;  the  worst  as  regards  undying  malice,  —  in  which 
qualification  for  mischief  Dr.  Johnson  was  not  at  all  behind  the 
diabolical  Lauder  or  the  maniacal  Curran  ;  and  the  foremost  by 
many  degrees  in  talents  and  opportunities  for  giving  effect  to 
his  malice.  I  will  here  expand  the  several  steps  in  the  process 
of  the  case,  so  that  the  least  attentive  of  readers,  or  least  lo"-ical, 
may  understand  in  what  mode  and  in  what  degree  Dr.  Johnson, 
hunting  for  a  triumph,  allowed  himself  to  trespass  across  the 
frontiers  of  calumny  and  falsehood,  and  at  the  same  time  may 
understand  how  far  my  own  exposiire  smashes  the  Doctor's 
attempt  in  the  shell. 

Dr.  Johnson  is  pursuing  the  narrative  of  Milton's  travels  in 
Italy ;  and  he  has  arrived  at  that  point  where  Milton,  then  in 
the  south  of  that  peninsula,  and  designing  to  go  forward  into 
Greece,  Egj-pt,  and  Sj-ria,  is  suddenly  arrested  by  great  tidings 
froip,  England  :  so  great,  indeed,  that  in  Milton's  ear,  who  well 
knew  to  what  issue  the  public  disputes  were  tending,  these  ti- 
dings must  have  sounded  revolutionary.  The  king  was  prepar- 
ing a  second  military  expedition  against  Scotland;  that  is 
against  Scotland  as  the  bulwark  of  an  odious  anti-episcopal 
church.  It  was  notorious  that  the  English  aristocracy  by  a 
very  lai^e  section,  and  much  of  the  English  nation  ujmju 
motives  variously  combined,  some  on  religious  grounds,  some  on 
political,  could  not  be  relied  on  for  any  effectual  support  in  a 
war  having  such  objects,  and  opening  so  many  occasions  for 
diverting  the  national  arms  to  popular  purposes.  It  was  pretty 
well  known  also,  that  dreadful  pecuniary  embarrassments  would 


LFt'E    OF    MILTON.  91 

at  last  compel  the  king  to  smnmon,  in  right  earnest,  such  a  Par- 
liament as  would  no  longer  be  manageable,  but  would  in  the 
very  first  week  of  its  meeting  find  a  security  against  a  sudden 
dissolution.  Using  its  present  advantages  prudently,  any  Par- 
liament would  now  bring  the  king  virtually  upon  his  knees:  and 
the  issue  must  be  —  ample  concession  on  the  king's  part  to 
claimants  now  become  national,  or  else  Revolution  and  Civil 
War.  At  such  a  time,  and  with  such  prospects,  what  honest 
patriot  could  have  endured  to  absent  himself,  and  under  no 
more  substantial  excuse  than  a  transient  gratification  to  his 
classical  and  archaeological  tastes  ?  —  tastes  liberal  and  honor- 
able beyond  a  doubt,  but  not  of  a  rank  to  interfere  with  more 
solemn  duties.  This  change  in  his  prospects,  and  consequently 
in  his  duties,  was  painful  enough,  we  may  be  sure,  to  Milton : 
but  with  his  principles,  and  his  deep  self-denj'ing  sense  of  duty, 
there  seems  no  room  for  question  or  hesitation  :  and  already  at 
this  point,  before  they  go  a  step  further,  all  readers  capable  of 
measuring  the  disappointment,  or  of  appreciating  the  temper  in 
which  such  a  self-conquest  must  have  been  achieved,  will  sym- 
pathize heroically  with  JSIilton's  victorious  resistance  to  a  tempta- 
tion so  specially  framed  as  a  snare  for  him,  and  at  the  same  time 
will  sympathize  fraternally  with  Milton's  bitter  suffering  of  self- 
sacrifice  as  to  all  that  formed  the  sting  of  that  temptation. 
Such  is  the  spirit  in  which  many  a  noble  heart,  that  may  be  far 
from  approving  Milton's  politics,  will  read  this  secret  Miltonic 
struggle  more  than  two  hundred  years  after  all  is  over.  Such 
is  not  the  spirit  (as  we  shall  now  see)  in  which  it  has  been  read 
by  falsehood  and  malice. 

2.  But  before  coming  to  that,  there  is  a  sort  of  parenthesis  of 
introduction.  Dr.  Johnson  summons  us  all  not  to  suffer  any 
veneration  for  Milton  to  intercept  our  merriment  at  what, 
according  to  his  version  of  the  story,  Milton  is  now  doing.  I 
therefore,  on  my  part,  call  on  the  reader  to  observe,  that  in  Dr. 
Johnson's  opinion,  if  a  great  man,  the  glory  of  his  race,  should 
happen  through  human  frailty  to  sufler  a  momentary  eclipse  of 
his  grandeur,  the  proper  and  becoming  utterance  of  our  impres- 
sions as  to  such  a  collapse  would  not  be  by  silence  and  sadness, 
but  by  vulgar  yells  of  merriment.     The  Doctor  is  anxious  that 


92  LIFE  OF   MILTON. 

we  should  not  in  any  case  moderate  our  laughter  under  any  re- 
membrance of  loho  it  is  that  we  are  laughing  at. 

3.  "Well,  having  stated  this  little  item  in  the  Johnson  creed,  I 
am  not  meditating  any  waste  of  time  in  discussing  it,  especially 
because  the  case  which  the  Doctor's  maxim  contemplates  is 
altogether  imaginarj'.  The  case  in  which  he  recommended 
unrestrained  laughter,  was  a  case  of  "  great  promises  and  small 
performances."  AVhere  then  does  Dr.  Sam  show  us  such  a 
case  ?  Is  it  in  any  part  or  section  of  Milton's  Italian  experi- 
ence ?  Logically  it  ought  to  be  so ;  because  else  what  relation 
can  it  bear  to  any  subject  which  the  Doctor  has  brought  before 
us  V  But  in  anjiihing  that  ISIilton  on  this  occasion,  or  on  any 
occasion  whatever  connected  with  the  sacrifice  of  his  Greek, 
Egj'ptian,  or  Syrian  projects,  either  said  or  did,  there  is  no 
promise  at  all,  small  or  great  And  as  to  any  relation  between 
the  supposed  promise  and  the  subsequent  performance,  as 
though  the  one  were  incommensurable  to  the  other,  doubtless 
many  are  the  incommensurable  quantities  known  to  mathema- 
ticians ;  but  I  conceive  that  the  geometrj'  which  measures  their 
relations,  where  the  promise  was  never  made  and  the  perform- 
ance never  contemplated,  must  be  lost  and  hid  away  in  secret 
chambers  of  moonshine  beyond  the  "  recuperative "  powers 
(Johnsonically  speaking)  of  Apollonius  himself.  Milton  made 
no  promises  at  all,  consequently  could  not  break  any.  And  to 
represent  him,  for  a  purpose  of  blame  and  ridicule,  as  doing 
either  this  or  that,  is  malice  at  any  rate  ;  too  much,  I  fear,  is 
wilful,  conscious,  deliberate  falsehood. 

4,  TNTiat  was  it  then  which  ]\Iilton  did  in  Italy,  as  to  which  I 
never  heard  of  his  glorying,  though  most  fervently  he  was 
entitled  to  glory  ?  Knowing  that  in  a  land  which  is  passing 
through  stages  of  political  renovation,  of  searching  purification, 
and  of  all  which  we  now  understand  by  the  term  revolution, 
golden  occasions  ofi*er  themselves  unexpectedly  for  suggesting 
golden  enlargements  or  revisions  of  abuses  else  overlooked,  but 
that,  when  the  wax  has  hardened,  the  opening  is  lost,  so  that 
great  interests  may  depend  upon  the  actual  presence  of  some 
individual  reformer,  and  that  his  absence  may  operate  injuri- 
ously through  long  gener;ations,  he  wisely  resolved  (though  say* 


LIFE   OF   MILTON.  98 

ing  little  about  the  enormous  sacrifice  which  this  entailed)  to  be 
present  as  soon  as  the  great  crucible  was  likely  to  be  in  active 
operation.  And  the  sacrifice  which  he  made,  ftjr  this  great 
series  of  watching  opportunities  which  so  memorably  he  after- 
wards improved,  was,  that  he  renounced  the  heavenly  specta- 
cle of  the  iEgean  Sea  and  its  sunny  groups  of  islands,  renounced 
the  sight  of  Attica,  of  the  Theban  districts,  of  the  Morea;  next, 
of  that  ancient  river  Nile,  the  river  of  Pharaoh  and  Moses,  of 
the  Pyramids,  and  the  hundred-gated  Thebes ;  finally,  he  re- 
nounced the  land  of  SjTia,  much  of  which  was  then  doubtless 
unsafe  for  a  Frank  of  any  religion,  and  for  a  Christian  of  any 
nation.  But  he  might  have  travelled  in  one  district  of  SjTia, 
viz.  Palestine,  which  for  him  had  paramount  attractions.  All 
these  objects  of  commanding  interest  to  any  profound  scholar, 
Greece,  the  Grecian  Isles,  Egjpt,  and  Palestine,  he  surrendered 
to  his  sense  of  duty  ;  not  by  any  promise  or  engagement,  but  by 
the  act  then  and  there  of  turning  his  face  homewards ;  well 
aware  at  the  time  that  his  chance  was  small  indeed,  under  his 
peculiar  prospects,  of  ever  recovering  his  lost  chance.  He  did 
not  promise  any  sacrifice.  Who  was  then  in  Italy  to  whom  he 
could  rationally  have  confided  such  an  engagement  V  He  made 
the  sacrifice  without  a  word  of  promise.  So  much  for  Dr. 
Johnson's  "  small  performance." 

5.  But  supposing  that  there  had  been  any  words  uttered  by 
Milton,  authorizing  great  expectations  of  what  he  would  do  in 
the  way  of  patriotic  service,  where  is  the  proof  that  the  very 
largest  promises  conceivable,  interpreted  (as  they  ought  to  have 
been)  by  the  known  circumstances  of  Milton's  social  position, 
were  not  realized  in  vast  over-measure  ?  I  contend  that  even 
the  various  polemic^^  works,  which  Milton  published  through  the 
next  twenty  years  ;  for  instance,  his  new  views  on  Education, 
on  Freedom  of  the  Press,  to  some  extent,  also,  his  Apology  for 
Tyrannicide,  but  above  all  his  De/ensio  pro  Populo  Anf/licano, 
against  the  most  insolent,  and  in  this  particular  case,  the  most 
ignorant  champion  that  literary  Christendom  could  have  se- 
lected, —  that  immortal  Apology  for  England, 

"  Whereof  all  Europe  rang  from  side  to  side." 


94  LIFE    OF   MILTON. 

Had  this  been  all,  he  would  have  redeemed  in  the  noblest  man- 
ner  any  promises  that  he  could  have  made,  not  to  repeat  that  he 
made  none.  But  there  is  a  deeper  knavery  in  Dr.  Johnson  than 
simply  what  shows  itself  thus  far.  One  word  remains  to  be  said 
on  another  aspect  of  the  case. 

6.  Thus  far  we  see  the  Doctor  fastening  upon  Milton  a  forged 
engagement,  for  the  one  sole  purpose  of  showing  that  the 
responsibility  thus  contracted  was  ludicrously  betrayed.  Now 
let  us  understand  how.  Supposing  Milton  to  have  done  what 
the  Doctor  vaguely  asserts,  —  i.  e.  to  have  promised  that,  during 
the  coming  revolutionary  struggle  in  his  country,  he  would  him- 
self do  something  to  make  this  struggle  grand  or  serviceable,  — 
how  was  it,  where  was  it,  when  was  it,  that  he  brought  his  vow 
to  an  inglorious  solution,  to  the  Horatian  solution  of  Parturiunt 
mantes,  &c.  ?  Dr.  Johnson  would  apparently  have  thought  it  a 
most  appropriate  and  heroic  solution,  if  Milton  had  made  him- 
self a  major  in  the  Lobsters*  of  Sir  Arthur  Hazelrigg,  or  among 
the  Ironsides  of  Cromwell.  But,  on  the  contrary,  he  made  him- 
self (risum  teneatis .')  a  schoohnaster.  Dr.  Johnson  (himself  a 
schoolmaster  at  one  time),  if  he  had  possessed  any  sense  of  true 
dignity,  would  have  recollected  and  said  secretly  to  himself,  de 
iefabula  narratur,  and  would  have  abhorred  to  throw  out  lures 
to  a  mocking  audience,  when  he  himself  lurked  under  the  mask 
offered  to  public  banter.  On  this,  however,  I  do  not  pause ; 
neither  do  I  pause  upon  a  question  so  entirely  childish,  as 
whether  Milton  ever  was,  in  any  legal  sense,  clothed  with  the 
character  of  schoolmaster  ?  I  refiise  even,  out  of  reverential 
sympathy  with  that  majestic  mind  that  would  have  made  Milton 
refuse,  to  insist  upon  the  fact  that,  even  under  this  most  puerile 
assault  upon  his  social  rank,  Milton  did  really  (by  making  him- 
self secretary  to  Cromwell)  rise  into  something  very  like  the 
official  station  of  Foreign  Secretary.  All  this  I  blow  away  to 
the  four  winds.  I  am  now  investigating  the  sincerity  and  hon- 
esty of  Dr.  Johnson  under  a  trying  temptation  from  malice  that 
cannot  be  expressed  nor  measured.  He  had  bound  himself  to 
bring  out  Samson  blind  and  amongst  enemies  to  make  sport  for 
the  Philistines  at  Gaza.  And  the  sport  was  to  lie  in  the  col- 
lision between  a  mighty  promise  and  a  miserable  perfomjance 


LIFE    OF    MILTOX.  95 

What  the  Doctor  tells  us,  therefore,  in  support  of  this  allega- 
tion, is,  that  somewhere  or  other  Milton  announced  a  magnifi- 
cent display  of  patriotism  at  some  time  and  in  some  place,  but 
that  when  he  reached  London  all  this  pomp  of  preparation 
evanesced  in  his  opening  a  private  boarding-school. 

Upon  this  I  have  one  question  to  propound ;  and  I  will  makr 
it  more  impressive,  and  perhaps  intelligible,  bj-  going  back  into 
history,  and  searching  about  for  a  great  man,  as  to  whom  the 
same  question  may  be  put  with  more  effect.  Most  of  us  think 
that  Hannibal  was  a  great  man ;  and  amongst  distinguished 
people  of  letters,  my  own  contemporaries,  when  any  accident 
has  suggested  a  comparison  amongst  the  intellectual  leaders  of 
antiquity,  I  have  noted  that  a  very  large  majority  (two  thirds  I 
should  say  against  one)  gave  a  most  cordial  vote  for  the  suprem- 
acy of  this  one-eyed  Carthaginian.  AVell,  this  man  was  once  a 
boy ;  and,  when  not  more  than  nine  years  old,  he  was  solemnly 
led  by  his  father  to  the  blazing  altar  of  some  fierce  avenging 
deity  (Moloch  perhaps)  such  as  his  compatriots  worshipped,  and 
by  all  the  sanctities  that  ever  he  had  heard  of,  the  boy  was 
pledged  and  sacramentally  bound  to  an  undying  hatred  and 
persecution  of  the  Eomans.  And  most  people  are  of  opinion 
that  he,  the  man  who  fought  with  no  backer  but  a  travelling** 
earthquake  at  Lake  ThrasA-mene,  and  subsecjuently  at  Cannaj 
left  50,000  Romans  on  the  ground,  and  for  seventeen  years  took 
his  pleasure  in  Italy,  pretty  well  redeemed  his  vow. 

Now  let  us  suppose  (and  it  is  no  extravagant  supposition  even 
for  those  days)  that  some  secretary,  a  slave  in  the  house  of  Amil- 
car,  had  kept  a  Boswellian  record  of  Hannibal's  words  and 
acts  from  childhood  upwards.  Naturally  there  would  have  been 
a  fine  illustration  (such  as  the  age  allowed)  of  the  great  vow  at 
the  altar.  All  readers  in  after  times,  arrested  and  impressed  by 
the  scene,  would  inquire  for  its  sequel :  did  that  correspond  ?  If 
amongst  these  readers  there  were  a  Samuel  Johnson,  he  would 
turn  over  a  page  or  two,  so  as  to  advance  by  a  few  months,  and 
there  he  might  possibly  find  a  commemoration  of  some  festival 
or  carousing  party,  in  which  the  too  faithful  and  literal  secretary 
had  recorded  that  the  young  malek  Hannibal  had  insisted 
angrily  on  having  at  dinner  beefsteaks  and  oyster-sauce,  —  a 


96  LIKE    OF   MILTON. 

dish  naturally  imported  by  the  Phoenician  sailors  from  the  Cas- 
siterides  of  Cornwall.  Then  -would  rise  Sam  in  his  glory,  and, 
turning  back  to  the  vow,  would  insist  that  this  was  its  fulfilment. 
Others  would  seek  it  on  Mount  St.  Bernard,  on  the  line  of  the 
Apennines,  on  the  deadly  field  of  Cannae ;  but  Sam  would 
read  thus :  Suffer  not  your  veneration  to  intercept  your  just 
and  reasonable  mocker}-.  Our  great  prince  vows  eternal  hatred 
to  the  enemies  of  his  country,  and  he  redeems  his  vow  by  eat- 
ing a  beefsteak  with  a  British  accompaniment  of  oyster-sauce. 

The  same  question  arises  severally  in  the  !Milton  and  the 
Hannibal  case,  —  "\Miat  relation,  unless  for  the  false  fleeting 
eye  of  malice,  has  the  act  or  the  occasion  indicated  to  the  sup- 
posed solemnity  of  the  vow  alleged  ?  Show  us  the  logic  which 
approximates  the  passages  in  either  life. 

I  fear  that  at  this  point  any  plain  man  of  simple  integrity  will 
feel  himself  disconcerted  as  in  some  mystification  purposely 
framed  to  perplex  him.  "Let  me  understand,"  he  will  say, 
"  if  a  man  draws  a  bill  payable  in  twenty  years  after  date,  how 
is  he  liable  to  be  called  upon  for  payment  at  a  term  far  within 
its  legal  curricvlum  f "  Precisely  so :  the  very  excess  of  the 
knavery  avails  to  conceal  it  Hannibal  confessedly  had  pledged 
himself  to  a  certain  result,  whereas  Milton  had  not ;  and  to  that 
extent  Hannibal's  case  was  the  weaker.  But  assume  for  the 
moment  that  both  stand  on  the  same  footing.  Each  is  supposed 
to  have  guaranteed  some  great  event  upon  the  confidence 
which  he  has  in  his  own  great  powers.  But,  of  course,  he  under- 
stands that,  until  the  full  development  of  those  powers  on  which 
exclusively  he  relies,  he  does  not  come  within  the  peril  of  his 
own  obligation.  And  this  being  a  postulate  of  mere  natural 
justice,  I  contend  that  there  was  no  more  relation,  such  as  could 
have  duped  Dr.  Johnson  for  a  moment,  between  any  suppos- 
able  promise  of  Milton's  in  Italy  and  that  particular  week  in 
which  he  undertook  the  training  of  his  youthful  nephews  (or,  if 
it  soothes  the  rancor  of  Dr.  Johnson  to  say  so,  in  which  he 
opened  a  boarding-school),  than  between  Hannibal  at  the  altar 
and  the  same  Hannibal  dining  on  a  beefsteak.  From  all  the 
days  of  Milton's  life,  carefully  to  pick  out  that  one  on  which 
only  Milton  did  what  Sam  implicitly  thinks  a  mean,  "  low-lived  ' 


LIFE    OF    MILTON.  VI 

action,  is  a  knavery  that  could  not  have  gone  undetected  had 
the  case  been  argued  at  bar  by  counsel.  It  was  base,  it  must 
have  been  base,  to  enter  on  the  trade  of  schoolmaster ;  for,  as 
Ancient  Pistol,  that  great  moralist,  teaches  us,  "  base  is  the  man 
that  pays  " ;  and  Milton  probably  had  no  other  durable  resource 
for  paying.  But  still,  however  vile  iu  Milton,  this  does  not  at 
all  mend  the  logic  of  the  Doctor  in  singling  out  that  day  or 
week  from  the  thousands  through  which  Milton  lived. 

Dr.  Johnson  wished  to  go  further ;  but  he  was  pulled  up  by 
an  ugly  remembrance.  In  earlier  years  the  desperation  of 
malice  had  led  him  into  a  perilous  participation  in  Lauder's 
atrocities  ;  by  haste  and  by  leaps  as  desperate  as  the  oifence,  on 
that  occasion  he  escaped ;  but  hardly :  and  I  believe,  much  as 
the  oblivions  of  time  aid  such  escapes  by  obliterating  the  traces 
or  the  meanings  of  action,  and  the  coherences  of  oral  evidence, 
that  even  yet,  by  following  the  guidance  of  Dr.  Douglas  (the  un- 
masker  of  the  leading  criminal),  some  discoveries  might  be  made 
as  to  Johnson's  co-operation. 

But  in  writing  The  Lives  of  the  Poets,  one  of  the  Doctor's 
latest  works,  he  had  learned  caution.  jMalice,  he  found,  was 
not  always  safe  ;  and  it  might  sometimes  be  costly.  Still  there 
was  plenty  of  game  to  be  had  without  too  much  risk.  And  the 
Doctor,  prompted  by  the  fiend,  resolved  to  "  take  a  shy,"  before 
parting,  at  the  most  consecrated  of  Milton's  creations.  It  really 
vexes  me  to  notice  this  second  case  at  all  in  a  situation  where  I 
have  left  myself  so  little  room  for  unmasking  its  hoUowness. 
But  a  whisper  is  enough  if  it  reaches  a  watchful  ear.  ^Miat, 
then,  is  the  supreme  jewel  which  Milton  has  bequeathed  to  us  ? 
Nobody  can  doubt  that  it  is  Paradise  Lost? 

Into  this  great  chef-d'oeuvre  of  Milton,  it  was  no  doubt  John- 
son's secret  determination  to  send  a  telling  shot  at  parting.  He 
would  lodge  a  little  gage  d'amitie',  a  farewell  pledge  of  hatred,  a 
trifling  token  (trifling,  but  such  things  are  not  estimated  in 
money)  of  his  eternal  malice.  ^Milton's  admirers  might  divide 
it  among  themselves;  and,  if  it  should  happen  to  fester  and 
rankle  in  their  hearts,  so  much  the  better ;  they  were  heartily 
welcome  to  the  poison :  not  a  jot  would  he  deduct  for  himself 
if  %  thousand  times  greater.  O  Sam  !  kill  us  not  with  munifi- 
7 


9B  LIFE    OF    MILTOIi. 

cence.  But  now,  as  I  mast  close  within  a  minute  or  so,  wliat  w 
that  pretty  souvenir  of  gracious  detestation  with  which  our 
friend  took  his  leave  ?  The  Paradise  Lost,  said  he,  in  effect,  is 
a  wonderful  work;  wonderful;  grand  beyond  all  estimate; 
sublime  to  a  fault.  But  —  well,  go  on ;  we  are  all  listening. 
But  —  I  grieve  to  say  it,  weariscwne.  It  creates  a  world  of 
admiration  (one  world,  take  notice)  ;  but  —  O  that  I,  senior 
offshoot  trova.  the  house  of  Malagrowthers,  should  live  to 
say  it !  —  ten  worlds  of  ennui :  one  world  of  astonishment ;  ten 
worlds  of  tcedium  vitce.  Half  and  half  might  be  tolerated,  —  it  is 
often  tolerated  by  the  bibulous  and  others;  but  one  against 
ten  ?     Xo,  no ! 

This,  then,  was  the  farewell  blessing  which  Dr.  Johnson  be- 
stowed upon  the  Paradise  Lost :  what  is  my  reply  ?  The  poem, 
it  seems,  is  wearisome ;  Edmund  Waller  called  it  dull.  A  man, 
it  is  alleged  by  Dr.  Johnson,  opens  the  volume ;  reads  a  page  or 
two  with  feelings  allied  to  awe :  next  he  finds  himself  rather 
jaded ;  then  sleepy  :  naturally  shuts  up  the  book ;  and  forgets 
ever  to  take  it  down  again.  Now,  when  any  work  of  human  art 
is  impeached  as  wearisome,  the  first  reply  is —  wearisome  to 
whom  t  For  it  so  happens  that  nothing  exists,  absolutely  noth- 
ing, which  is  not  at  some  time,  and  to  some  person,  wearisome, 
or  even  potentially  disgusting.  There  is  no  exception  for  the 
works  of  God.  "  Man  delights  not  me,  nor  woman  either,"  is 
the  sigh  which  breathes  from  the  morbid  misanthropy  of  the 
gloomy  but  philosophic  Hamlet.  Weariness,  moreover,  and 
even  sleepiness,  is  the  natural  reaction  of  awe  or  of  feelings  too 
highly  strung  ;  and  this  reaction  in  some  degree  proves  the  sin- 
cerity of  the  previous  awe.  In  cases  of  that  class,  where  the 
impressions  of  sympathetic  veneration  have  been  really  unaf- 
fected, but  carried  too  far,  the  mistake  is  —  to  have  read  too 
much  at  a  time.  But  these  are  exceptional  cases  :  to  the  great 
majority  of  readers  the  poem  is  wearisome  through  mere  vulgar- 
ity and  helpless  imbecility  of  mind ;  not  from  overstrained  ex- 
citement, but  from  pure  defect  in  the  capacity  for  excitement. 
And  a  moment's  reflection  at  this  point  lays  bare  to  us  the 
malignity  of  Dr.  Johnson.  The  logic  of  that  malignity  is  simply 
this :  that  he  applies  to  Milton,  as  if  separately  and  specially 


LIFE    OF   MILTON.  9^ 

true  of  Mm,  a  rule  abstracted  from  human  experience  spread 
over  the  total  field  of  civilization.  All  nations  are  here  on  a 
level.  Not  a  hundredth  part  of  their  populations  is  capable  of 
any  unaffected  sympathy  with  what  is  truly  great  in  sculpture, 
in  painting,  in  music,  and  by  a  transcendent  necessity  in  the 
supreme  of  Fine  Arts,  —  Poetry.  To  be  popular  in  any  but  a 
meagre  comparative  sense  as  an  artist  of  whatsoever  class,  is  to 
be  confessedly  a  condescender  to  human  infirmities.  And  as  to 
the  test  which  Dr.  Johnson,  by  implication,  proposes  as  trj'ing 
the  merits  of  IVIilton  in  his  greatest  work,  viz.  the  degree  in 
which  it  was  read,  the  Doctor  knew  pretty  well,  and  when  by 
axicident  he  did  not,  was  inexcusable  for  neglecting  to  inquire, 
that  by  the  same  test  all  the  great  classical  works  of  past  ages, 
Pagan  or  Christian,  might  be  branded  with  the  mark  of  suspi- 
cion as  works  that  had  failed  of  their  paramount  purpose,  viz.  a 
deep  control  over  the  modes  of  thinking  and  feeling  in  each  suc- 
cessive generation.  Were  it  not  for  the  continued  succession 
of  academic  students  having  a  contingent  7nercenary  interest  in 
many  of  the  great  authors  surviving  from  the  wrecks  of  time, 
scarcely  one  edition  of  fresh  copies  would  be  called  for  in  each 
period  of  fifty  years.  And  as  to  the  arts  of  sculpture  and  paint- 
ing, were  the  great  monuments  in  the  former  art  —  those,  I  mean, 
inherited  from  Greece,  such  as  the  groups,  &c.,  scattered  through 
Italian  mansions,  the  Venus,  the  Apollo,  the  Hercules,  the 
Faun,  the  Gladiator,  and  the  marbles  in  the  British  Museum, 
purchased  by  the  government  from  the  late  Lord  Elgin  — 
stripped  of  their  metropolitan  advantages,  and  left  to  their  own 
unaided  attraction  in  some  provincial  town,  they  would  not 
avail  to  keep  the  requisite  officers  of  any  establishment  for 
housing  them  in  salt  and  tobacco.  We  may  judge  of  this  by 
the  records  left  behind  by  Benjamin  Haydon,  of  the  difficulty 
which  he  found  in  simply  upholding  their  value  as  wrecks  of  the 
Phidian  era.  The  same  law  asserts  itself  everywhere.  What 
is  ideally  grand  lies  beyond  the  region  of  ordinary^  human  s}Tn- 
pathies,  which  must,  by  a  mere  instinct  of  good  sense,  seek  out 
objects  more  congenial  and  upon  their  own  level.  One  answer 
to  Johnson's  killing  shot,  as  he  kindly  meant  it,  is,  that  our 
brother  is  not  dead  but   sleeping.     Regularly  as  the  cominor 


100  LIFE    OF   MILTON. 

generations  unfold  their  vast  processions,  regularly  as  these  pro- 
cessions move  forward  upon  the  impulse  and  summons  of  a 
nobler  music,  regularly  as  the  dormant  powers  and  sensibil- 
ities of  the  intellect  in  the  working  man  are  more  and  more 
developed,  the  Paradise  Lost  will  be  called  for  more  and  more : 
less  and  less  continually  will  there  be  any  reason  to  complain 
that  the  immortal  book,  being  once  restored  to  its  place,  is  left 
to  slumber  for  a  generation.  So  far  as  regards  the  Time  which 
is  coming;  but  Dr.  Johnson's  insulting  farewell  was  an  arrow 
feathered  to  meet  the  Past  and  Present.  We  may  be  glad  at 
any  rate  that  the  supposed  neglect  is  not  a  wrong  which  Milton 
does,  but  which  Milton  suffers.  Yet  that  Dr.  Johnson  should 
have  pretended  to  think  the  case  in  any  special  way  affecting 
the  reputation  or  latent  powers  of  Milton,  —  Dr.  Johnson,  that 
knew  the  fates  of  books,  and  had  seen  by  moonhght,  in  the 
Bodleian,  the  ghostly  array  of  innumerable  books  long  since  de- 
parted as  regards  all  human  interest  or  knowledge,  —  a  review 
like  that  in  Beranger's  Dream  of  the  First  Napoleon  at  St. 
Helena,  reviewing  the  buried  forms  from  Austerlitz  or  Boro- 
dino, horses  and  men,  trumpets  and  eagles,  all  phantom  delu- 
sions, vanishing  as  the  eternal  dawn  returned,  —  might  have 
seemed  incredible  except  to  one  who  knew  the  immortality  of 
malice,  —  that  for  a  moment  Dr.  Johnson  supposed  himself 
seated  on  the  tribunal  in  the  character  of  judge,  and  that  Mil- 
ton was  in  fancy  placed  before  him  at  the  bar,  — 

"  Quern  si  non  aliqua  nocixisset,  mortuus  esset" 


LIFE    OF    MILTON.  IM 


MILTON'S    LIFE. 


That  sanctity  which  settles  on  the  memory  of  a  gre&.t 
man  ought,  upon  a  double  motive,  to  be  vigilantly  sus- 
tained by  his  countrymen ;  first,  out  of  gratitude  to  him 
as  one  column  of  the  national  grandeur;  secondly,  with  a 
practical  purpose  of  transmitting  unimpaired  to  posterity 
the  benefit  of  ennobling  models.  High  standards  of  excel- 
lence are  among  the  happiest  distinctions  by  which  the 
modern  ages  of  the  world  have  an  advantage  over  earlier, 
and  we  are  all  interested,  by  duty  as  well  as  policy,  in  pre- 
serving them  inviolate.  To  the  benefit  of  this  principle 
none  amongst  the  great  men  of  Eiwland  is  better  entitled 
than  Milton,  whether  as  respects  his  transcendent  merit,  or 
the  harshness  with  which  his  memory  has  been  treated. 

John  Milton  was  born  in  London  on  the  9  th  day  of 
December,  1608.  His  father,  in  early  life,  had  suffered  for 
conscience'  sake,  having  been  disinherited  upon  his  abjuring 
the  Popish  faith.  He  pursued  the  laborious  profession  of  a 
scrivener,  and  having  realized  an  ample  fortune  retired  into 
the  country  to  enjoy  it.  Educated  at  Oxford,  he  gave  his 
son  the  best  education  that  the  age  afforded.  At  first, 
young  Milton  had  the  benefit  of  a  private  tutor :  from  him 
he  was  removed  to  St.  Paul's  School ;  next  he  proceeded 
to  Christ's  College,  Cambridge ;  and  finally,  after  several 
years'  preparation  by  extensive  reading,  he  pursued  a 
course  of  Continental  travel.     It  is  to  be  observed,  that  his 


102  LIFE    OF    MILTON. 

tutor,  Thomas  Young,  was  a  Puritan,  and  there  is  reason 
to  believe  that  Puritan  politics  prevailed  among  the  Fellows 
of  his  College.  This  must  not  be  forgotten  in  speculating 
on  Milton's  public  life,  and  his  inexorable  hostility  to  the 
established  government  in  Church  and  State ;  for  it  will 
thus  appear  probable,  that  he  was  at  no  time  withdrawn 
from  the  influence  of  Puritan  connections. 

In  1632,  having  taken  the  degree  of  M.  A.,  Milton  finally 
quitted  the  University,  leaving  behind  him  a  very  brilliant 
r^utation,  and  a  general  good-will  in  his  own  College. 
His  father  had  now  retired  from  London,  and  lived  upon 
his  own  estate  in  Horton,  in  Buckinghamshire.  In  this 
rural  solitude,  Milton  passed  the  next  five  years,  resorting 
to  London  only  at  rare  intervals,  for  the  purchase  of  books 
or  music.  His  time  was  chiefly  occupied  with  the  study  of 
Greek  and  Roman,  and  no  doubt  also  of  Italian  literature. 
But  that  he  was  not  negligent  of  composition,  and  that  he 
applied  himself  with  great  zeal  to  the  culture  of  his  native 
literature,  we  have  a  splendid  record  in  his  "  Comus," 
which,  upon  the  strongest  presumptions,  is  ascribed  to  this 
period  of  his  life.  In  the  same  neighborhood,  and  within 
the  same  five  years,  it  is  believed  that  he  produced  also  the 
"  Arcades  "  and  the  "  Lycidas,"  together  with  "  L' Allegro  " 
and  "  II  Penseroso." 

In  1637,  Milton's  mother  died,  and  in  the  following  year 
he  commenced  his  travels.  The  state  of  Europe  confined 
his  choice  of  ground  to  France  and  Italy.  The  former 
excited  in  him  but  little  interest.  After  a  short  stay  at 
Paris,  he  pursued  the  direct  route  to  Nice,  where  he  em- 
barked for  Grenoa,  and  thence  proceeded  to  Pisa,  Florence, 
Rome,  and  Naples.  He  originally  meant  to  extend  his 
tour  to  Sicily  and  Greece ;  but  the  news  of  the  first  Scotch 
war,  having  now  reached  him,  agitated  his  mind  with  too 
much  patriotic  sympathy  to  allow  of  his  embarking  on  a 


LIFE    OV   MILTON.  108 

scheme  of  such  uncertain  duration.  Yet  his  homeward 
movements  were  not  remarkable  for  expedition.  He  had 
ah'eady  spent  two  months  in  Florence  and  as  many  in 
Rome,  but  he  devoted  the  same  space  of  time  to  each  of 
them  on  his  return.  From  Florence  he  proceeded  to 
Lucca,  and  thence,  by  Bologna  and  Ferrara,  to  Venice, 
where  he  remained  one  month,  and  then  pursued  his  home- 
ward route  through  Verona,  Milan,  and  Geneva. 

Sir  Henry  Wotton  had  recommended  as  the  rule  of  his 
conduct  a  celebrated  Italian  proverb,  inculcating  the  policy 
of  reserve  and  dissimulation.  And  so  far  did  this  old  fox 
carry  his  refinements  of  cunning,  that  even  the  dissimula- 
tion was  to  be  dissembled.  /  pensieri  stretti,  the  thoughts 
being  under  the  closest  restraint,  nevertheless  il  viso  sciolto, 
the  countenance  was  to  be  open  as  the  day.  From  a  prac- 
tised diplomatist  this  advice  was  characteristic  ;  but  it  did 
not  suit  the  frankness  of  Milton's  manners,  nor  the  noble- 
ness of  his  mind.  He  has  himself  stated  to  us  his  own 
rule  of  conduct,  which  was  to  move  no  questions  of  contro- 
versy, yet  not  to  evade  them  when  pressed  upon  him  by 
others.  Upon  this  principle  he  acted,  not  without  some 
offence  to  his  associates,  nor  wholly  without  danger  to  him- 
self. But  the  offence,  doubtless,  was  blended  with  respect; 
the  danger  was  passed ;  and  he  returned  home  with  all  his 
purposes  fuUiUed.  He  had  conversed  with  Galileo ;  he  had 
seen  whatever  was  most  interesting  in  the  monuments  of 
Roman  grandeur  or  the  triumphs  of  Italian  art ;  and  he 
could  report  with  truth,  that  in  spite  of  his  religion,  every- 
where undissembled,  he  had  been  honored  by  the  attentions 
of  the  great  and  by  the  compliments  of  the  learned. 

After  fifteen  months  of  absence,  Milton  found  himself 
again  in  London  at  a  crisis  of  unusual  interest.  The  king 
was  on  the  eve  of  his  second  expedition  against  the  Scotch ; 
«ind  we  may  suppose  Milton  to  have  been  watching  the 


104  LIFE    OK    MILTON. 

course  of  events  with  profound  anxiety,  not  without  some 
anticipation  of  the  patriotic  labor  which  awaited  him. 
Meantime  he  occupied  himself  with  the  education  of  his 
sister's  two  sons  ;  and  soon  after,  by  way  of  obtaining  an 
honorable  maintenance,  increased  the  number  of  his  pupils. 
Dr.  Johnson,  himself  at  one  period  of  his  Ufe  a  school- 
master, on  this  occasion  indulges  in  a  sneer  and  a  false 
charge  too  injurious  to  be  neglected.  "  Let  not  our  venera- 
tion for  Milton,"  says  he,  "forbid  us  to  look  with  some 
degree  of  merriment  on  great  promises  and  small  perform- 
ance :  on  the  man  who  hastens  home  because  his  country- 
men are  contending  for  their  liberty,  and,  when  he  reaches 
the  scene  of  action,  vapors  away  his  patriotism  in  a  pri- 
vate boarding-school."  It  is  not  true  that  Milton  had  made 
"  great  promises,"  or  any  promises  at  all.  But  if  he  had 
made  the  greatest,  his  exertions  for  the  next  sixteen  years 
nobly  redeemed  them.  In  what  way  did  Dr.  Johnson  expect 
that  his  patriotism  should  be  expressed?  As  a  soldier? 
Milton  has  himself  urged  his  bodily  weakness  and  intel- 
lectual strength,  as  reasons  for  following  a  line  of  duty  ten 
thousand  times  nobler.  Was  he  influenced  in  his  choice 
by  fear  of  military  dangers  or  hardships  ?  Far  fi-ora  it : 
"  For  I  did  not,"  he  says,  "  shun  those  evils  without  en- 
gaging to  render  to  my  fellow-citizens  services  much  more 
useful,  and  attended  with  no  less  of  danger."  What  ser- 
vices were  those  ?  We  will  state  them  in  his  own  words, 
anticipated  from  an  after  period.  "  When  I  observed  that 
there  are  in  all  three  modes  of  liberty, — first,  ecclesiastical 
liberty  ;  secondly,  civil  liberty  ;  thirdly,  domestic :  having 
myself  already  treated  of  the  first,  and  noticing  that  the 
magistrate  was  taking  steps  in  behalf  of  the  second,  I  con- 
cluded that  the  third,  that  is  to  say  domestic,  or  household 
liberty,  remained  to  me  as  my  peculiar  province.  And 
whereas  this  again  is  capable  of  a  threefold  subdivision, 


LIFE    OF   MILTON.  105 

accordingly  as  it  regards  the  interests  of  conjugal  life  in  the 
first  place,  or  those  of  education  in  the  second,  or  finally 
the  freedom  of  speech,  and  the  right  of  giving  full  publica- 
tion to  sound  opinions,  —  I  took  it  upon  myself  to  defend 
all  three,  the  first,  by  my  '  Doctrine  and  Discipline  of 
Divorce ; '  the  second,  by  my  Tractate  upon  Education ; 
the  third,  by  my  '  Areopagitica.' " 

In  1641,  he  conducted  his  defence  of  ecclesiastical  liberty 
in  a  series  of  attacks  upon  Episcopacy.  These  are  written 
in  a  spirit  of  rancorous  hostility,  for  which  we  find  no 
sufficient  apology  in  Milton's  too  exclusive  converse  with  a 
faction  of  bishop-haters,  or  even  in  the  alleged  low  con- 
dition of  the  episcopal  bench  at  that  particular  era.^ 

At  Whitsuntide,  in  the  year  1645,  having  reached  his 
thirty-fifth  year,  Milton  married  Mary  Powel,**  a  young 
lady  of  good  extraction,  in  the  county  of  Oxford.  One 
month  after,  he  allowed  his  wife  to  visit  her  family.  This 
permission,  in  itself  somewhat  singular,  the  lady  abused ; 
for  when  summoned  back  to  her  home,  she  refused  to  re- 
turn. Upon  this  provocation,  Milton  set  himself  seriously 
to  consider  the  extent  of  the  obligations  imposed  by  the 
nuptial  vow ;  and  soon  came  to  the  conclusion,  that  in  point 
of  conscience  it  was  not  less  dissoluble  for  hopeless  incom- 
patibility of  temper  than  for  positive  adultery ;  and  that 
human  laws,  in  so  far  as  they  opposed  this  principle, 
called  for  reformation.  These  views  he  laid  before  the 
public  in  his  "  Doctrine  and  Discipline  of  Divorce."  In 
treating  this  question  he  had  relied  entirely  upon  the  force 
of  argument,  not  aware  that  he  had  the  countenance  of  any 
great  authorities ;  but  finding  soon  afterwards  that  some  of 
the  early  Reformers,  Bucer  and  P.  Martyr,  had  taken  the 
same  view  as  himself,  he  drew  up  an  account  of  their  com- 
ments on  this  subject.  Hence  arose  the  second  of  his 
tracts  on  Divorce.     Meantime,  as  it  was  certain  that  many 


106  LIFE    OF   MILTON. 

yould  abide  by  what  they  supposed  to  be  the  positive  lan- 
guage of  Scripture,  in  opposition  to  all  authority  what- 
soever, he  thought  it  advisable  to  write  a  third  tract  on  the 
proper  interpretation  of  the  chief  passages  in  Scripture 
which  refer  to  this  point.  A  fourth  tract,  by  way  of 
answer  to  the  different  writers  who  had  opposed  his 
opinions,  terminated  the  series. 

Meantime  the  lady,  whose  rash  conduct  had  provoked 
her  husband  into  these  speculations,  saw  reason  to  repent 
of  her  indiscretion ;  and  finding  that  Milton  held  her  deser- 
tion to  have  cancelled  all  claims  upon  his  justice,  wisely 
resolved  upon  making  her  appeal  to  his  generosity.  This 
appeal  was  not  made  in  vain :  in  a  single  interview  at  the 
house  of  a  common  friend,  where  she  had  contrived  to  sur- 
prise him,  and  suddenly  to  throw  herself  at  his  feet,  he 
granted  her  a  full  forgiveness ;  and  so  Uttle  did  he  allow 
himself  to  remember  her  misconduct,  or  that  of  her  family 
in  having  countenanced  her  desertion,  that  soon  after- 
wards, when  they  were  involved  in  the  general  ruin  of  the 
royal  cause,  he  received  the  whole  of  them  into  his  house, 
and  exerted  his  political  influence  very  freely  in  their 
behalf.  Fully  to  appreciate  this  behavior,  we  must  rec- 
ollect that  Milton  was  not  rich,  and  that  no  part  of  his 
wife's  marriage  portion  (£1,000)  was  ever  paid  to  him. 

His  thoughts  now  settled  upon  the  subject  of  education, 
which  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  he  connected  systemat- 
ically with  domestic  liberty.  In  1644  he  published  his 
essay  on  this  great  theme,  in  the  form  of  a  letter  to  his 
friend  Hartlib,  himself  a  person  of  no  slight  consideration. 
In  the  same  year  he  wrote  his  "  Areopagitica ;  a  Speech 
for  the  Liberty  of  Unlicensed  Printing."  This  we  are  to 
consider  in  the  light  of  an  oral  pleading  or  regular  oration, 
for  he  tells  us  expressly  {^Def.  2)  that  he  wrote  it  "ad 
jusiae  orationis  modum."     It  is  the  finest  specimen  extant 


LIFE    OF   MILTON.  107 

of  generous  scorn.  And  very  remarkable  it  is  that  Milton, 
who  broke  the  ground  on  this  great  theme,  has  exhausted 
the  arguments  which  bear  upon  it.  He  op>ened  the 
subject;  he  closed  it.  And  were  there,  no  other  monu- 
ment of  his  patriotism  and  his  genius,  for  this  alone  he 
would  deserve  to  be  held  in  perpetual  veneration.  In 
the  following  year,  1645,  was  published  the  first  collection 
of  his  early  poems ;  with  his  sanction,  undoubtedly,  but 
probably  not  upon  his  suggestion.  The  times  were  too 
full  of  anxiety  to  allow  of  much  encouragement  to  polite 
literature :  at  no  period  were  there  fewer  readers  of 
poetry.  And  for  himself  in  particular,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  a  few  sonnets,  it  is  probable  that  he  composed 
as  little  as  others  read,  for  the  next  ten  years ;  so  great 
were  his  political  exertions. 

Early  in  1649  the  king  was  put  to  death.  For  a  full 
view  of  the  state  of  parties  which  led  to  this  memorable 
event,  we  must  refer  the  reader  to  the  history  of  the  times. 
That  act  was  done  by  the  Independent  party,  to  which 
Milton  belonged,  and  was  precipitated  by  the  intrigues 
of  the  Presbyterians,  who  were  making  common  cause 
with  the  king,  to  insure  the  overthrow  of  the  Independ- 
ents. The  lamentations  and  outcries  of  the  Presbyterians 
were  long  and  loud.  Under  color  of  a  generous  sympathy 
with  the  unhappy  prince,  they  mourned  for  their  own 
political  extinction  and  the  triumph  of  their  enemies. 
This  Milton  well  knew ;  and  to  expose  the  selfishness  of 
their  clamors,  as  well  as  to  disarm  their  appeals  to  the 
popular  feeling,  he  now  published  his  "  Tenure  of  Kings 
and  Magistrates."  In  the  first  part  of  this  he  addresses 
himself  to  the  general  question  of  tyrannicide,  justifying 
it,  first,  by  arguments  of  general  reason,  and,  secondly, 
by  the  authority  of  the  Reformers.  But  in  the  latter  part 
ae  arsrues  the  case  oersonallv.  contendmff  that  the  Pres* 


108  Ll^'E    OF    MILTON. 

byterians  at  least  were  not  entitled  to  condemn  the  king's 
death,  who,  in  levying  war  and  doing  battle  against  the 
king's  person,  had  done  so  much  that  tended  to  no  other 
result  "  If  then,"  is  his  ai'gument,  "  in  these  proceedings 
against  their  king,  they  may  not  finish,  by  the  usual 
course  of  justice,  what  they  have  begun,  they  could  not 
lawfully  begin  at  all."  The  argument  seems  inconclusive, 
even  as  addressed  ad  hominem  ;  the  struggle  bore  the  char- 
acter of  a  war  between  independent  parties,  rather  than  a 
judicial  inquiry,  and  in  war  the  life  of  a  prisoner  be- 
comes sacred. 

At  this  time  the  Council  of  State  had  resolved  no 
longer  to  employ  the  language  of  a  rival  people  in  their 
international  concerns,  but  to  use  the  Latin  tongue  as  a 
neutral  and  indifferent  instrument.  The  office  of  Latin 
Secretary,  therefore,  was  created,  and  bestowed  upon 
Milton.  His  hours  from  henceforth  must  have  been 
pretty  well  occupied  by  official  labors.  Yet  at  this  time 
he  undertook  a  service  to  the  state,  more  invidious  and 
perhaps  more  perilous  than  any  in  which  his  politics  ever 
involved  him.  On  the  very  day  of  the  king's  execution, 
and  even  below  the  scaffold,  had  been  sold  the  earliest 
copies  of  a  work  admirably  fitted  to  shake  the  new  gov- 
ernment, and  which,  for  the  sensation  produced  at  the 
time,  and  the  lasting  controversy  as  to  its  authorship, 
is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  known  in  literary  history. 
This  was  the  "  Eikon  Ba^ilike,  or  Royal  Image,"  pro- 
fessing to  be  a  series  of  meditations  drawn  up  by  the  late 
king,  on  the  leading  events  from  the  very  beginning  of 
the  national  troubles.  Appearing  at  this  critical  moment, 
and  co-operating  with  the  strong  reaction  of  the  public 
mind,  already  effected  in  the  king's  favor  by  his  violent 
death,  this  book  produced  an  impression  absolutely  un- 
paralleled in  that  century.     Fifty  thousand  copies,  it  is 


LIFE    OF    MILTON.  109 

asserted,  were  sold  within  one  year ;  and  a  posthumous 
power  was  thus  given  to  the  king's  name  by  one  little 
book,  which  exceeded,  in  alarm  to  his  enemies,  all  that 
his  armies  could  accomplish  in  his  lifetime.  No  remedy 
could  meet  the  evil  in  degree.  As  the  only  one  that 
seemed  fitted  to  it  in  kind,  Milton  drew  up  a  running 
commentary  upon  each  separate  head  of  the  original ;  and 
as  that  had  been  entitled  the  king's  image,  he  gave  to 
his  own  the  title  of  "  Eikonoclastes,  or  Image-Breaker," 
tlie  famous  surname  of  some  amongst  the  Byzantine 
Caesars,  who  broke  in  pieces  what  they  considered  super- 
stitious images. 

This  work  was  drawn  up  with  the  usual  polemic  abil- 
ity of  Milton ;  but  by  its  very  plan  and  purpose,  it  threw 
him  upon  difficulties  which  no  ability  could  meet.  It  had 
that  inevitable  disadvantage  which  belongs  to  all  minis- 
terial and  secondary  works  ;  the  order  and  choice  of  topics 
being  aU  determined  by  the  Eikon,  Milton,  for  the  first 
time,  wore  an  air  of  constraint  and  servility,  following 
a  leader  and  obeying  his  motions,  as  an  engraver  is  con- 
trolled by  the  designer,  or  a  translator  by  his  original. 
It  is  plain,  from  the  pains  he  took  to  exonerate  himself 
from  such  a  reproach,  that  he  felt  his  task  to  be  an  invid^ 
ious  one.  The  majesty  of  grief,  expressing  itself  with 
Chi'istian  meekness,  and  appealing,  as  it  were,  from  the 
grave  to  the  consciences  of  men,  could  not  be  violated 
without  a  recoil  of  angry  feeling,  ruinous  to  the  effect 
of  any  logic,  or  rhetoric  the  most  persuasive.  The  afflic- 
tion of  a  great  prince,  his  solitude,  his  rigorous  imprison- 
ment, his  constancy  to  some  purposes  which  were  not 
selfish,  his  dignity  of  demeanor  in  the  midst  of  his  heavy 
trials,  and  his  truly  Christian  fortitude  in  his  final  suffer- 
ings, — ■  these  formed  a  rhetoric  which  made  its  way  to  all 
hearts.     Against  such  influences  the  eloquence  of  Greece 


110  LIFK    OK    MILTON. 

would  have  been  vain.  The  nation  was  spell-bound ;  and 
a  majority  of  its  population  neither  could  nor  would  be 
disenchanted. 

Milton  was  erelong  called  to  plead  the  same  great 
cause  upon  an  ampler  stage,  and  before  an  audience  less 
preoccupied  with  hostile  views;  to  plead,  not  on  behalf 
of  his  party  against  the  Presbyterians  and  Royalists,  but 
on  behalf  of  his  country  against  the  insults  of  a  hired 
Frenchman,  and  at  the  bar  of  the  whole  Christian  world. 
Charles  II.  had  resolved  to  state  his  father's  case  to  all 
Europe.  This  was  natural,  for  very  few  people  on  the 
Continent  knew  what  cause  had  brought  his  father  to 
the  block,  or  why  he  himself  was  a  vagrant  exile  fix)m 
his  throne.  For  his  advocate  he  selected  Claudius  Sal- 
masius,  and  that  was  most  injudicious.  This  man,  emi- 
nent among  the  scholars  of  the  day,  had  some  brilhant 
accomplishments,  which  were  useless  in  such  a  service, 
while  in  those  which  were  really  indispensable  he  was 
singularly  deficient.  He  was  ignorant  of  the  world,  want- 
ing in  temper  and  self-command,  conspicuously  unfur- 
nished with  eloquence,  or  the  accomphshments  of  a  good 
writer,  and  not  so  much  as  master  of  a  pure  Latin  style. 
Even  as  a  scholar  he  was  very  unequal ;  he  had  commit- 
ted more  important  blunders  than  any  man  of  his  age, 
and,  being  generally  hated,  had  been  more  frequently 
exposed  than  others  to  the  harsh  chastisements  of  men 
inferior  to  himself  in  learning.  Yet  the  most  remarkable 
deficiency  of  all  which  Salmasius  betrayed,  was  in  his 
entire  ignorance,  whether  historical  or  constitutional,  of 
everything  which  belonged  to  the  case. 

Having  such  an  antagonist,  inferior  to  him  in  all  possi- 
ble qualifications,  whether  of  nature,  of  art,  of  situation, 
it  may  be  supposed  that  Milton's  triumph  was  absolute. 
He  was  now  thoroughly  indemnified  for  the  poor  succesi 


LIFE    OF    MILTON.  Ill 

of  his  "  Eikonoclastes."  In  that  instance  he  had  the 
mortification  of  knowing  that  all  England  read  and  wept 
over  the  king's  book,  whilst  his  own  reply  was  scarcely 
heard  of.  But  here  the  tables  were  turned;  the  very 
friends  of  Salmasius  complained,  that,  while  his  defence 
was  rarely  inquired  after,  the  answer  to  it,  "Defensio 
pro  Populo  Anglicano,"  was  the  subject  of  conversation 
from  one  end  of  Europe  to  the  other.  It  was  burnt 
publicly  at  Paris  and  Toulouse;  and,  by  way  of  special 
annoyance  to  Salmasius,  who  lived  in  Holland,  was  trans- 
lated into  Dutch. 

Salmasius  died  in  1653,  before  he  could  accomplish  an 
answer  which  satisfied  himself;  and  the  fragment  which 
he  left  behind  him  was  not  published,  until  it  was  no 
longer  safe  for  Milton  to  rejoin.  Meantime,  others  pressed 
forward  against  Milton  in  the  same  controversy,  of  whom 
some  were  neglected,  one  was  resigned  to  the  pen  of  his 
nephew  Philips,  and  one  answered  diffusely  by  himself. 
This  was  Du  Moulin,  or,  as  Milton  persisted  in  believing, 
Morus,  a  Reformed  minister  then  resident  in  Holland, 
and  at  one  time  a  friend  of  Salmasius.  Two  years  after 
the  publication  of  this  man's  book,  ("  Regii  Sanguinis 
Clamor,")  Milton  received  multiplied  assurances  from 
Holland  that  Morus  was  its  true  author.  Tliis  was  not 
wonderful.  Morus  had  corrected  the  press,  had  adopted 
the  principles  and  passions  of  the  book,  and  perhaps  at 
first  had  not  been  displeased  to  find  himself  reputed  the 
author.  In  reply,  Milton  published  his  "  Defensio  Se- 
cunda  pro  ,  Populo  Anglicano,"  seasoned  in  every  page 
with  some  stinging  allusions  to  Morus.  All  the  circum- 
stances of  his  early  life  were  recalled,  and  some  were  such 
as  the  grave  divine  would  willingly  have  concealed  from 
the  public  eye.  He  endeavored  to  avert  too  late  the 
storm  of  wit  and  satire  about  to  burst  on  him,  by  denvinar 


11  i  LIFE    OF    MILTON. 

the  work,  and  even  revealing  the  author's  real  name ;  but 
Milton  resolutely  refused  to  make  the  slightest  alteration. 
The  true  reason  of  this  probably  was  that  the  work  was 
written  so  exclusively  against  Morus,  full  of  personal 
scandal,  and  puns  and  gibes  upon  his  name,  which  in 
Greek  signifies  a  fool,  that  it  would  have  been  useless 
and  irrelevant  as  an  answer  to  any  other  person.  In 
Milton's  conduct  on  this  occasion,  there  is  a  want  both 
of  charity  and  candor.  Personally,  however,  Morus  has 
little  ground  for  complaint ;  he  had  bearded  the  Hon 
by  submitting  to  be  reputed  the  author  of  a  work  not 
his  own.  Morus  replied,  and  Milton  closed  the  contro- 
versy by  a  defence  of  himself,  in  1655. 

He  had,  indeed,  about  this  time  some  domestic  afflictions, 
which  reminded  him  of  the  frail  tenure  on  which  all  human 
blessings  were  held,  and  the  necessity  that  he  should  now 
begin  to  concentrate  his  mind  upon  the  great  M'oi-ks  which 
he  meditated.  In  1651  his  first  wife  died,  after  she  had 
given  him  three  daughters.  In  that  year  he  had  already 
lost  the  use  of  one  eye,  and  was  warned  by  the  physicians, 
that,  if  he  persisted  in  his  task  of  replying  to  Salmasius,  he 
would  probably  lose  the  other.  The  warning  was  soon  ac- 
complished; according  to  the  common  account,  in  1654; 
but  upon  collating  his  letter  to  Philaras  the  Athenian  with 
his  own  pathetic  statement  in  the  "  Defensio  Secunda,"  we 
are  disposed  to  date  it  from  1652.  In  1655  he  resigned 
his  office  of  secretary,  in  which  he  had  latterly  been  obliged 
to  use  an  assistant. 

Some  time  before  this  period,  he  had  married  his  second 
wife,  Catherine  "Woodcock,  to  whom  it  is  supposed  that  he 
was  very  tenderly  attached.  In  1657  she  died  in  child- 
birth, together  with  her  child,  an  event  which  he  has  re- 
corded in  a  very  beautiful  sonnet.  This  loss,  added  to  his 
blindness,  must  have  made  his  home,  for  some  years,  deso- 


LIFE    OF    MILTON.  113 

late  and  comfortless.  Distress,  indeed,  was  now  gathering 
rapidly  upon  him.  The  death  of  Cromwell  in  the  follow- 
ing year,  and  the  unaspiring  character  of  his  eldest  son, 
held  out  an  invitation  to  the  ambitious  intriguers  of  the  day, 
which  they  were  not  slow  to  improve.  It  soon  became  too 
evident  to  Milton's  discernment,  that  all  things  were  hurry- 
ing forward  to  restoration  of  the  ejected  family.  Sensible 
of  the  risk,  therefore,  and  without  much  hope,  but  obeying 
the  summons  of  his  conscience,  he  wrote  a  short  tract  on 
the  ready  and  easy  way  to  establish  a  free  commonwealth, 
concluding  with  those  noble  words,  "  Thus  much  I  should 
perhaps  have  said,  though  I  were  sure  I  should  have 
spoken  only  to  trees  and  stones,  and  had  none  to  cry  to, 
but  with  the  prophet,  O  earth  !  earth !  earth !  to  tell  the 
very  soil  itself  what  her  perverse  inhabitants  are  deaf  to. 
Nay,  though  what  I  have  spoken  should  happen  [which 
Thou  suffer  not,  who  didst  create  free,  nor  Thou  next,  who 
didst  redeem  us  from  being  servants  of  men]  to  be  the  last 
words  of  our  expiring  liberty."  A  slighter  pamphlet  on 
the  same  subject,  "  Brief  Notes  "  upon  a  sermon  by  one 
Dr.  Griffiths,  must  be  supposed  to  be  written  rather  with  a 
religious  purpose  of  correcting  a  false  application  of  sacred 
texts,  than  with  any  great  expectation  of  political  benefit 
to  his  party.  Dr.  Johnson,  with  his  customary  insolence, 
says,  that  he  kicked  when  he  could  strike  no  longer: 
more  justly  it  might  be  said,  that  he  held  up  a  solitary 
hand  of  protestation  on  behalf  of  that  cause,  now  in  its 
expiring  struggles,  which  he  had  maintained  when  pros- 
perous ;  and  that  he  continued  to  the  last  one  uniform  lan- 
guage, though  he  now  believed  resistance  to  be  hopeless, 
and  knew  it  to  be  full  of  peril. 

That  peril  was  soon  realized.    In  the  spring  of  1660,  the 
Restoration   was  accomplished,  amidst  the  tumultous   re- 
joicings of  the  people.     It  was  certain  that  the  vengeance 
8 


114  LIKE    OF    MILTON. 

of  goverament  would  lose  no  time  in  marking  its  victims ; 
for  some  of  them,  m  anticipation,  had  already  fled.  Mil- 
ton  wisely  withdrew  from  the  first  fury  of  the  persecution 
which  now  descended  on  his  party.  He  secreted  himself  in 
London,  and  when  he  returned  into  the  pubUc  eye,  in  the 
winter,  found  himself  no  further  punished  than  by  a  gen- 
eral disqualification  for  the  pubUc  service,  and  the  disgrace 
of  a  public  burning  inflicted  on  his  "  Eikonoclastes,"  and 
his  "  Defensio  pro  Populo  Anglicano." 

Apparently  it  was  not  long  after  this  time  that  he  mar- 
ried his  third  wife,  Elizabeth  Minshul,  a  lady  of  good 
family  in  Cheshire.  In  what  year  he  began  the  composi- 
tion of  his  "  Paradise  Lost "  is  not  certainly  known :  some 
have  supposed  in  1658.  There  is  better  ground  for  fixing 
the  period  of  its  close.  During  the  plague  of  1 605,  he  re- 
tired to  Chalfont,  and  at  that  time  Elwood  the  Quaker  read 
the  poem  in  a  finished  state.  The  general  interruption  of 
business  in  London,  occasioned  by  the  plague,  and  pro- 
longed by  the  great  fire  in  1666,  explains  why  the  publica- 
tion was  delayed  for  nearly  two  years.  The  contract  with 
the  publisher  is  dated  April  26,  1667,  and  in  the  course  of 
that  year  the  "  Paradise  Lost "  was  published.  Originally 
it  was  printed  in  ten  books :  in  the  second  and  subsequent 
editions,  the  seventh  and  tenth  books  were  each  divided 
into  two.  IVIilton  received  five  pounds  in  the  first  instance 
on  the  publication  of  the  book.  His  further  profits  were 
regulated  by  the  sale  of  the  first  three  editions.  Each  was 
to  consist  of  1,500  copies,  and  on  the  second  and  third 
respectively  reaching  a  sale  of  1,300,  he  was  to  receive  a 
further  sum  of  five  pounds  for  each ;  making  a  total  of 
fifteen  pounds.  The  receipt  for  the  second  sum  of  five 
pounds  is  dated  April  26,  1669. 

Li   1670,  Milton   published   his   "History  of  Britain,' 
from  the  fabulous  period  to  the  Norman  conquest.     And  iu 


LIFE    OF    MILTON.  115 

Ae  same  year  he  published,  in  one  volume,  "  Paradise 
Regained  "  and  "  Samson  Agonistes."  The  "  Paradise 
Regained,"  it  has  been  currently  asserted  that  Milton  pre- 
feiTed  to  "  Paradise  Lost."  This  is  not  true ;  but  he  may 
have  been  justly  offended  by  the  false  principles  on  which 
some  of  his  friends  maintained  a  reasonable  opinion.  The 
"  Paradise  Regained  "  is  inferior,  but  only  by  the  necessity 
of  its  subject  and  design,  not  by  less  finished  composition. 
In  the  "  Paradise  Lost,"  Milton  had  a  field  properly 
adapted  to  a  poet's  purposes:  a  few  hints  in  Scripture 
were  expanded.  Nothing  was  altered,  nothing  absolutely 
added :  but  that  which  was  told  in  the  Scriptures  in  sum, 
or  in  its  last  results,  was  developed  into  its  whole  succes- 
sion of  parts.  Thus,  for  instance,  "  There  was  war  in 
heaven,"  furnished  the  matter  for  a  whole  book.  Now  for 
the  latter  poem,  —  which  part  of  our  Saviour's  life  was  it 
best  to  select  as  that  in  which  Paradise  was  Regained  ? 
He  might  have  taken  the  Crucifixion,  and  here  he  had  a 
much  wider  field  than  in  the  Temptation ;  but  then  he  was 
subject  to  this  dilemma.  If  he  modified,  or  in  any  way 
altered,  the  full  details  of  the  four  Evangelists,  he  shocked 
the  religious  sense  of  all  Christians  ;  yet  the  purposes  of  a 
poet  would  often  require  that  he  should  so  modify  them. 
With  a  fine  sense  of  this  difficulty,  he  chose  the  narrow 
basis  of  the  Temptation  in  the  Wilderness,  because  there 
the  whole  had  been  wrapt  up  by  Scripture  in  a  few  obscure 
abstractions.  Thus,  "  He  showed  him  all  the  kingdoms 
of  the  earth,"  is  expanded,  without  offence  to  the  nicest 
religious  scruple,  into  that  matchless  succession  of  pictures, 
which  bring  before  us  the  learned  glories  of  Athens,  Rome 
in  her  civil  grandeur,  and  the  barbaric  splendor  of  Parthia. 
The  actors  being  only  two,  the  action  of  "  Paradise  Re- 
gained "  is  unavoidably  limited.  But  in  respect  of  com- 
position, it  is  perhaps  more  elaborately  finished  than 
«  Paradise  Lost." 


116  LIFE    OF    MILTON. 

In  1672,  he  published  in  Latin  a  new  scheme  of  Logic, 
on  the  method  of  Ramus,  in  which  Dr.  Johnson  suspects 
him  to  have  meditated  the  very  eccentric  crime  of  rebel- 
lion against  the  Universities.  Be  that  as  it  may,  this  little 
book  is  in  one  view  not  without  interest ;  all  scholastic 
systems  of  logic  confound  logic  and  metaphysics ;  and  some 
of  Milton's  metaphysical  doctrines,  as  the  present  Bishop 
of  Winchester  has  noticed,  have  a  reference  to  the  doc- 
trines brought  forward  in  his  posthumous  Theology.  The 
history  of  the  last-named  work  is  remarkable.  That  such 
a  treatise  had  existed  was  well  known,  but  it  had  disap- 
peared and  was  supposed  to  be  irrecoverably  lost.  Mean- 
time, in  the  year  1823,  a  Latin  manuscript  was  discovered 
in  the  State-Paper  Office,  under  circumstances  which  leave 
little  doubt  of  its  being  the  identical  work  which  Milton 
was  known  to  have  composed.  By  the  king's  command,  it 
was  edited  by  Mr.  Sumner,  the  present  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester, and  separately  published  in  a  translation. 

What  he  pubhshed  after  the  scheme  of  logic  is  not  im- 
portant enough  to  merit  a  separate  notice.  His  end  was 
now  approaching.  In  the  summer  of  1674  he  was  still 
cheerful  and  in  the  possession  of  his  intellectual  faculties. 
But  the  vigor  of  his  bodily  constitution  had  been  silently 
giving  way,  through  a  long  course  of  years,  to  the  ravages 
of  gout  It  was  at  length  thoroughly  undermined :  and 
about  the  10th  of  November,  1674,  he  died  with  tranquil- 
lity so  profound,  that  his  attendants  were  unable  to  deter- 
mine the  exact  moment  of  his  decease.  He  was  buried, 
with  unusual  marks  of  honor,  in  the  chancel  of  St-  Giles's, 
at  Cripplegate. 

*  [The  published  lives  of  Milton  are  very  numerous. 
Among  the  best  and  most  copious  are  tliose  prefixed  to  the 
editions  of  Milton's  Works,  by  Bishop  Newton,  secondly 


LIFE    OP   MILTON.  117 

by  Todd,  and  thirdly  by  Symmons.  An  article  of  consid- 
erable length,  founded  upon  the  latter,  will  be  found  in 
Rees's  Cyclopcedia.  But  the  most  remarkable  is  that  writ- 
ten by  Dr.  Johnson  in  his  Lives  of  the  British  Poets  ;  a 
production  grievously  disfigured  by  prejudice,  yet  well  de- 
serving the  student's  attention,  for  its  intrinsic  merits,  as 
well  as  for  the  celebrity  which  it  has  attained.] 


MILTON* 

Wx  have  two  ideas,  which  we  8u:e  anxious  to  bring 
ander  public  notice,  with  regard  to  Milton.  The  readei 
whom  Providence  shall  send  us  will  not  measure  the 
value  of  these  ideas  (we  trust  and  hope)  by  their  bulk. 
The  reader  indeed  —  that  great  idea  !  —  is  very  often 
a  more  important  person  towards  the  fortune  of  an 
essay  than  the  writer.  Even  "  the  prosperity  of  a  jest," 
as  Shakspeare  tells  us,  lies  less  in  its  own  merit  than 
"  in  the  ear  of  him  that  hears  it."  If  he  should  hap- 
pen to  be  unusually  obtuse,  the  wittiest  jest  perishes, 
the  most  pointed  is  found  blunt.  So,  with  regard  to 
books,  should  the  reader  on  whom  we  build  prove  a 
sandy  and  treacherous  foundation,  the  whole  edifice, 
*'  temple  and  tower,"  must  come  to  the  ground. 
Should  it  happen,  for  instance,  that  the  reader,  in- 
flicted upon  ourselves  for  our  sins,  belongs  to  that 
olass  of  people  who  listen  to  books  in  the  ratio  of  their 
much  speaking,  find  no  eloquence  in  32mo,  and  lit- 
tle force  of  argument  except  in  such  a  folio  as  might 
knock  him  down  upon  occasion  of  his  proving  restive 
against  its  logic  —  in  that  case  he  will  despise  out 
present  essay.  Will  despise  it  ?  He  does  despise  it, 
for  already  he  sees  that  it  is  short.  His  contempt  is  a 
ftigh  a  priori  contempt ;  for  he  measures  us  by  antir* 


ICILTOK. 


119 


pation,  and  needs  to  wait  for  no  experience  in  order  to 
nndicate  his  sentence  against  us. 

Yet,  in  one  view,  this  brevity  of  an  essayist  does 
leem  to  warrant  his  reader  in  some  little  indignation. 
We,  the  writer,  in  many  cases  expect  to  bring  over 
the  reader  to  our  opinion  —  else  wherefore  do  we 
write  ?  But,  within  so  small  a  compass  of  ground,  is 
it  reasonable  to  look  for  such  a  result  ?  "  Bear  wit- 
ness to  the  presumption  of  this  essay,"  we  hear  the 
reader  complaining :  "  It  measures  about  fourteen 
inches  by  five  —  seventy  square  inches  at  the  most ; 
and  is  it  within  human  belief  that  I,  simple  as  I  stand 
here,  shall  be  converted  in  so  narrow  an  area  ?  Here 
am  I  in  a  state  of  nature,  as  you  may  say.  An  acre  of 
sound  argument  might  do  something ;  but  here  is  r 
man  who  flatters  himself  that,  before  I  am  advanced 
seven  inches  further  in  my  studies,  he  is  to  work  i 
notable  change  in  my  creed.  By  Castor  and  Pollux  \ 
he  must  think  very  superbly  of  himself,  or  very  meanly 
of  me." 

Too  true ;  but  perhaps  there  are  faults  on  both 
sides.  The  writer  is  too  peremptory  and  exacting ; 
the  reader  is  too  restive.  The  writer  is  too  full  of  his 
3ffice,  which  he  fancies  is  that  of  a  teacher  or  a  pro- 
fessor speaking  ex  cathedra :  the  rebellious  reader  is 
oftentimes  too  determined  that  he  will  not  learn.  The 
me  conceits  himself  booted  and  spurred,  and  mounted 
on  his  reader's  back,  with  an  express  commission  for 
riding  him  ;  the  other  is  vicious,  apt  to  bolt  out  of  the 
tourse  at  every  opening,  and  resolute  in  this  point, 
that  he  will  not  be  ridden. 

There  are  some,  meantime,  who  take  a  very  difiereol 


L20  MII.TON- 

view  of  the  relations  existing  between  those  well-known 
parties  to  a  book  —  writer  and  reader.  So  far  from 
regarding  the  writer  as  entitled  to  the  homage  of  his 
reader,  as  if  he  were  some  feudal  Euperior,  they  hold 
him  little  better  than  an  actor  bowing  before  the  reader 
as  his  audience.  The  feudal  relation  of  fealty*  {Jideli- 
tas)  may  subsist  between  them,  but  the  places  are  in- 
verted :  the  writer  is  the  vassal ;  the  reader  it  is  who 
claims  to  be  the  sovereign.  Our  own  opinion  inclines 
this  way.  It  is  clear  that  the  writer  exists  for  the 
sake  of  the  reader,  not  tht  reader  for  the  sake  of  the 
writer.  Besides,  the  writer  bears  all  sorts  of  charac- 
ters, whilst  the  reader  universally  has  credit  for  the 
best.  We  have  all  heard  of  "  the  courteous  reader," 
"  the  candid  reader,"  "  the  enlightened  reader ;"  but 
which  of  us  ever  heard  of  "  the  discourteous  reader," 
"  the  mulish  reader,"  "  the  barbarous  reader  ? " 
Doubtless  there  is  no  such  person.  The  Goths  and 
Vandals  are  all  confined  to  the  writers.  "  The  reader  " 
—  that  great  character  —  is  ever  wise,  ever  learned, 
ever  courteous.  Even  in  the  worst  of  times,  this  great 
man  preserved  his  purity.  Even  in  the  tenth  and 
eleventli  centuries,  which  we  usually  account  the  very 

*  Which  yrord  fealty  I  entreat  the  reader,  for  the  credit  of  his 
own  scholarship,  not  to  pronoonce  as  a  dissyllable,  but  fe-al-ty, 
as  a  trissyllable;  else  he  ruins  the  metrical  beauty  of  Chaucer,  of 
Bhakspeare,  of  Spenser,  of  Milton,  and  of  every  poet  through 
four  centuries  (the  fourteenth,  fifteenth,  sixteenth,  seventeenth, 
down  to  1699),  and  finally  registers  himself  as  an  ignoramus  and 
a  blockhead.  For  the  reason  lies  in  the  etymology  :  it  is  a  con 
tracted  form  of  fidelite,  or  feudal  loyalty.  How  does  the  reader 
pronounce  real  or  reality?  Surely  he  does  not  nay  reel,  or 
telity :  if  re-al,  then  he  can  say  fe-aL 


MII.TON.  121 

noontide  of  darkness,  he  shone  like  u  mould  candle 
among  basest  dips.  And  perhaps  it  is  our  duty  to 
presume  all  other  virtues  and  graces  as  no  less  essen- 
tial to  him  than  his  glorious  "  candor,"  his  "  courtesy," 
(surpassing  that  of  Sir  Gawain)*,  and  his  truly  "  en- 
lightened" understanding.  Indeed,  we  very  much 
question  whether  a  Mrriter,  who  carries  with  him  a  just 
feeling  of  his  allegiance  —  a  truly  loyal  writer  —  can 
lawfully  suppose  his  sovereign,  the  reader,  peccable  or 
capable  of  error ;  and  whether  there  is  not  even  a 
shade  of  impiety  in  conceiving  him  liable  to  the  affec- 
tions of  sleep,  or  of  yawning. 

Having  thus,  upon  our  knees,  as  it  were,  done  feudal 
homage  to  our  great  suzerain,  the  reader  —  having 
propitiated  him  with  Persian  adorations  and  with 
Phrygian  genuflexions,  let  us  now  crave  leave  to  con- 
vert him  a  little.  Convert  him !  —  that  sounds  "  un 
peu  fort"  does  it  not  ?  No,  not  at  all.  A  cat  may 
look  at  a  king ;  and  upon  this  or  that  out-of-the-way 
point  a  writer  may  presume  to  be  more  knowing  than 
his  reader  —  the  serf  may  undertake  to  convert  his 
lord.  The  reader  is  a  great  being  —  a  great  noun- 
substantive  ;  but  still,  like  a  mere  adjective,  he  is 
liable  to  the  three  degrees  of  comparison.  He  may  rise 
above  himself  —  he  may  transcend  the  ordinary  level 
of  readers,  however  exalted  that  level  be.  Being  great, 
he  may  become  greater.  Full  of  light,  he  may  yet 
labor  with  a  spot  or  two  of  darkness.  And  such  a 
spot  we  hold  the  prevalent  opinion  upon  Milton  in  two 

♦  "  Sir  Gavtain  :  "  —  In  all  the  old  metrical  romances,  thll 
taight  ia  celebrated  for  his  unique  courtesy 


L22  MILIOM. 

particular  questions  of  taste  —  questions  that  aie  not 
usulated,  but  diffusive ;  spreading  themselves  over  the 
entire  surface  of  the  "  Paradise  Lost,"  and  also  of  the 
"  Paradise  Regained ;  "  insomuch  that,  if  Milton  is 
wrong  once,  then  he  is  wrong  by  many  scores  of  times. 
Nay,  which  transcends  all  counting  of  cases  or  numerical 
estimates  of  error,  if,  in  the  separate  instances  (be  they 
few  or  be  they  many),  Milton  is  truly  and  indeed 
wrong  —  then  he  has  erred,  not  by  the  case,  but  by 
the  principle ;  and  that  is  a  thousand  times  worse  ;  for 
a  separate  case  or  instance  of  error  may  escape  any 
man  —  may  have  been  overlooked  amongst  the  press  of 
objects  crowding  on  his  eye ;  or,  if  not  overlooked  — 
if  passed  deliberately  —  may  plead  the  ordinary  privi- 
lege of  human  frailty.  The  man  erred ;  and  his  error 
terminates  in  itself.  But  an  error  of  principle  docs 
not  terminate  in  itself:  it  is  a  fountain,  it  is  self- 
diflfusive,  and  it  has  a  life  of  its  own.  The  faults 
of  a  great  man  are  in  any  case  contagious  ;  they 
are  dazzling  and  delusive  by  means  of  the  great  man's 
general  example.  But  his  false  principles  have  a  worse 
contagion.  They  operate  not  only  through  the  gen- 
eral haze  and  halo  which  invests  a  shining  example ; 
but,  even  if  transplanted  where  that  example  is  un- 
known, they  propagate  themselves  by  the  vitality  in- 
herent in  all  self-consistent  principles,  whether  true  or 
false. 

Before  we  notice  these  two  cases  of  Milton,  first  of 
all  let  us  ask  —  Who  and  what  is  Milton  ?  Dr.  John- 
son was  furiously  incensed  with  a  certain  man,  by  trade 
tn  author  and  manufacturer  of  books,  wholesale  and  re. 
tail,  for  introducing  Milton's  name  into  a  certain  index 


MILTOW.  12t{ 

iTider  the  letter  M,  thus  —  "  Milton,  Mr.  John."  That 
Mister,  undoubtedly,  was  hard  to  digest.  Yet  very 
often  it  happens  to  the  best  of  us  —  to  men  who  are 
(kr  enough  from  "  thinking  small  beer  of  themselves  " 
—  that  about  ten  o'clock,  a.  m.,  an  official  big-wig, 
sitting  at  Bow  Street,  calls  upon  the  man  to  account 
for  his  sprees  of  the  last  night,  for  his  feats  in  knock- 
ing down  lamp-posts  and  extinguishing  watchmen,  by 
this  ugly  demand  of —  "  Who  and  what  are  you,  sir  ?  " 
And  perhaps  the  poor  man,  sick  and  penitential  for 
want  of  soda  water,  really  finds  a  considerable  diffi- 
culty in  replying  satisfactorily  to  the  worthy  beek's 
apostrophe.  Although,  at  five  o'clock  in  the  evening, 
should  the  culprit  be  retuining  into  the  country  in  the 
Bame  coach  as  his  awful  intenogator,  he  might  be 
very  apt  to  look  fierce,  and  retort  this  amiable  inquiry, 
and  with  equal  thirst  for  knowledge  to  demand,  "  Now, 
jir,  if  you  come  to  that,  who  and  what  are  you  ?  "  And 
the  beek  in  his  turn,  though  so  apt  to  indulge  his  own 
>;uriosity  at  the  expense  of  the  public,  might  find  it  very 
difficult  to  satisfy  that  of  others. 

The  same  thing  happens  to  authors  ;  and  to  great 
authors  beyond  all  others.  So  accustomed  are  we  to 
survey  a  great  man  through  the  cloud  of  years  that 
has  gathered  round  him  —  so  impossible  is  it  to  detach 
him  from  the  pomp  and  equipage  of  all  who  have 
quoted  him,  copied  him,  echoed  him,  lectured  about 
lim,  disputed  about  him,  quarrelled  about  him,  that  in 
the  case  of  any  Anacharsis  the  Scythian  coming  amongst 
as  —  any  savage,  that  is  to  say,  uninstructed  in  our  lit- 
irature,  but  speaking  our  language,  and  feeling  an  intel- 
ligent interest  in  our  great  men  —  a  man  could  hardly 


124  HiLxoir. 

oelieve  at  first  how  perplexed  he  would  feel  —  how 
utterly  at  a  loss  for  any  adequate  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion, suddenly  proposed  — "  Who  and  what  teas  Mil- 
ton 7  "  That  is  to  say,  what  is  the  place  which  he 
fills  in  his  own  vernacular  literature?  what  station 
does  he  hold  in  universal  literature  ? 

I,  if  abruptly  called  upon  in  that  summary  fashion 
to  convey  a  commensurate  idea  of  Milton,  one  which 
might  at  once  correspond  to  his  pretensions,  and  yet 
be  readily  intelligible  to  the  savage,  should  answer 
perhaps  thus :  —  Milton  is  not  an  author  amongst  au- 
thors, not  a  poet  amongst  poets,  but  a  power  amongst 
powers ;  and  the  "  Paradise  Lost "  is  not  a  book 
amongst  books,  not  a  poem  amongst  poems,  but  a 
central  force  amongst  forces.  Let  me  explain.  There 
is  this  great  distinction  amongst  books :  some,  though 
possibly  the  best  in  their  class,  are  still  no  more  than 
books  —  not  indispensable,  not  incapable  of  supple- 
mentary representation  by  other  books.  If  they  had 
never  been  —  if  their  place  had  continued  for  ages 
unfilled  —  not  the  less,  upon  a  sufficient  excitement 
arising,  there  would  always  have  been  found  the  ability, 
either  directly  to  fill  up  the  vacancy,  or  at  least  to 
meet  the  same  passion  virtually,  though  by  a  work 
difiering  in  form.  Thus,  supposing  Butler  to  have 
died  in  youth,  and  the  "  Hudibras  "  to  have  been  inter- 
cepted by  his  premature  death,  still  the  ludicrous  as- 
pects of  the  Parliamentary  War,  and  its  fighting  saints, 
were  too  striking  to  have  perished.  If  not  in  a  nar- 
rative form,  the  case  would  have  come  forward  in  the 
drama.  Puritanical  sanctity,  in  collision  with  the  or 
dinary  interests  of  life,  and  with  its  militant  propen 


KILTOH,  129 

Bities,  offered  too  striking  a  field  for  the  Satiric  Muse, 
in  any  case,  to  have  passed  in  total  neglect.  The 
impulse  was  too  strong  for  repression  —  it  was  a  vol- 
canic agency,  that,  by  some  opening  or  other,  must 
bave  worked  a  way  for  itself  to  the  upper  air.  Yet 
Butler  was  a  most  original  poet,  and  a  creator  within 
his  own  province.  But,  like  many  another  original 
mind,  there  is  little  doubt  that  he  quelled  and  re- 
pressed, by  his  own  excellence,  other  minds  of  the 
same  cast.  Mere  despair  of  excelling  him,  so  far  as 
not,  after  all,  to  seem  imitators,  drove  back  others 
who  would  have  pressed  into  that  arena,  if  not  already 
brilliantly  filled.  Butler  failing,  there  would  have 
been  another  Butler,  either  in  the  same,  or  in  some 
analogous  form. 

But,  with  regard  to  Milton  and  the  Miltonic  power, 
the  case  is  far  otherwise.  If  the  man  had  failed,  the 
power  would  have  failed.  In  that  mode  of  power 
which  he  wielded,  the  function  was  exhausted  in  the 
man  —  the  species  was  identified  with  the  individual  — 
ihe  poetry  was  incarnated  in  the  poet. 

Let  it  be  remembered,  that,  of  all  powers  which  act 
upon  man  through  his  intellectual  nature,  the  very 
rarest  is  that  which  we  modems  call  the  sublime.  The 
Grecians  had  apparently  no  word  for  it,  unless  it  were 
that  which  they  meant  bv  to  asfivov :  for  vtpog  was  a 
comprehensive  expression  of  all  qualities  which  gave  a 
character  of  life  or  animation  to  the  composition, 
luch  even  as  were  philc^Jophically  opposed  to  the  sub- 
5me.  In  the  Homan  poetry,  and  especially  in  Lucan,  at 
times  also  in  Juvenal,  there  is  an  exhibition  of  a  moral 
lublime,   perfectly  distinct  from  anything  known   to 


126 


MILTOV. 


the  Greek  poetry.  The  delineations  of  republican 
grandeur,  as  expressing  itself  through  the  principal 
leaders  in  the  Roman  camps,  or  the  trampling  under 
foot  of  ordinary  superstitions,  as  given  in  the  reasons 
assigned  to  Labienus  for  passing  the  oracle  of  the 
Libyan  Jupiter  unconsulted,  are  in  a  style  to  which 
there  is  nothing  corresponding  in  the  whole  Grecian 
literature,  nor  would  they  have  been  comprehensible 
to  an  Athenian.  The  famous  line  — "  Jupiter  esi 
quodcunque  vides,  quocunque  moveris,"  and  the  brief 
review  of  such  questions  as  might  be  worthy  of  an 
oracular  god,  with  the  summary  declaration,  that  every 
one  of  those  points  we  know  already  by  the  light  of 
nature,  and  could  not  know  them  better  though  Ju- 
piter Ammon  himself  were  to  impress  them  on  our 
attention  — 

"  Scimus,  et  hsec  nobis  non  altios  inseret  Ammon  :  " 

"  We  know  it,  and  no  Ammon  will  ever  sink  it  deeper  into  our 
hearts;  " 

all  this  is  truly  Roman  in  its  sublimity  ;  and  so  ex- 
clusively Roman,  that  there,  and  not  in  poets  like 
the  Augustan,  expressly  modelling  their  poems  on 
Grecian  types,  ought  the  Roman  mind  to  be  studied. 

On  the  other  hand,  for  that  species  of  the  sublime 
which  does  not  rest  purely  and  merely  on  moral  ener- 
gies, but  on  a  synthesis  between  man  and  nature  —  for 
w^hat  may  properly  be  called  the  Ethico-physical  Sub* 
Ume  —  there  is  but  one  great  model  surviving  in  the 
Greek  poetry  —  viz.,  the  gigantic  drama  of  the  Pro- 
metheus crucified  on  Mount  Elborus.  And  this  dram* 
iiffers  so  much  from  everything  else,  even  in  the  poetrj 


MiLTOir.  187 

»f  ^schylus,  as  the  mythus  Itself  differs  so  much 
from  all  the  rest  of  the  Grecian  mythology  (belonging 
apparently  to  an  age  and  a  people  more  gloomy,  aus- 
tere, and  nearer  to  the  incunabula  mundi,  than  those 
which  bred  the  gay  and  sunny  superstitions  of  Greece), 
that  much  curiosity  and  speculation  have  naturally 
gathered  round  the  subject  of  late  years.  Laying  this 
one  insulated  case  apart,  and  considering  that  the  He- 
brew poetry  of  Isaiah  and  Ezekiel,  as  having  the  benefit 
of  inspiration,  does  not  lie  within  the  just  limits  of 
competition,  we  may  affirm  that  there  is  no  human 
composition  which  can  be  challenged  as  constitution- 
ally sublime  —  sublime  equally  by  its  conception  and 
by  its  execution,  or  as  uniformly  sublime  from  first  to 
last,  excepting  the  "  Paradise  Lost."  In  Milton  only, 
first  and  last,  is  the  power  of  the  sublime  revealed. 
In  Milton  only  does  this  great  agency  blaze  and  glow 
as  a  furnace  kept  up  to  a  white  heat  —  without  sus- 
picion of  collapse. 

Tf,  therefore,  Milton  occupies  this  unique  position  — 
and  let  the  reader  question  himself  closely  whether  he 
can  cite  any  other  book  than  the  "  Paradise  Lost,"  as 
continuously  sublime,  or  sublime  even  by  its  prevailing 
character  —  in  that  case  there  is  a  peculiarity  of  im- 
portance investing  that  one  book  which  belongs  to  no 
other ;  and  it  must  be  important  to  dissipate  any  er- 
loneous  notions  which  afiect  the  integrity  of  that 
book's  estimation.  Now,  there  are  two  notions  coun- 
tenanced by  Addison  and  by  Dr.  Johnson,  which  tend 
jjTeatly  to  disparage  the  character  of  its  composition. 
If  the  two  critics,  onfe  friendly,  the  other  very  malignant, 
»ut  both  endeavoring  to  be  just,  have  in  reality  built 


128  MILTOX. 

apon  sound  priuciples,  vr  at  least  upon  a  sound  appre^ 
ciation  of  Milton's  principles  —  in  that  case  there  is  » 
mortal  taint  diffused  over  the  whole  of  the  "  Paradise 
Lost :  "  for  not  a  single  book  is  clear  of  one  or  other  o/ 
the  two  errors  which  they  charge  upon  him.  We  will 
briefly  state  the  objections,  and  then  as  briefly  reply 
to  them,  by  exposing  the  true  philosophy  of  Milton's 
practice.  For  we  are  very  sure  that,  in  doing  as  he 
did,  this  mighty  poet  was  governed  by  no  carelessness 
or  oversight  (as  is  imagined),  far  less  by  affectation  or 
ostentation,  but  by  a  most  refined  theory  of  poetic 
effects. 

1 .  The  first  of  these  two  charges  respects  a  supposed 
pedantry,  or  too  ambitious  a  display  of  erudition.  It 
is  surprising  to  us  that  such  an  objection  should  have 
occurred  to  any  man ;  both  because,  after  all,  the 
quantity  of  learning  cannot  be  great  for  which  any 
poem  can  find  an  opening ;  and  because,  in  any  poem 
burning  with  concentrated  fire,  like  the  Miltonic,  the 
passion  becomes  a  law  to  itself,  and  will  not  receive 
into  connection  with  itself  any  parts  so  deficient  in 
harmony,  as  a  cold  ostentation  of  learned  illustrations 
must  always  have  been  found.  Still,  it  is  alleged  that 
such  words  as  frieze,  architrave,  cornice,  zenith,  &c., 
»re  words  of  art,  out  of  place  amongst  the  primitive 
simplicities  of  Paradise,  and  at  war  with  Milton's  pur- 
pose of  exhibiting  the  paradisaical  state. 

Now,  here  is  displayed  broadly  the  very  perfection 
of  ignorance,  as  measured  against  the  very  pcrfectitm 
»f  what  may  be  called  poetic  science.  We  will  lay 
open  the  true  purpose  of  Milton  by  a  single  illustra- 
Tion.     In  describing  impressive  scenery,  as  occurring 


MILTON.  129 

In  a  hilly  or  a  woody  country,  everybody  must  have 
noticed  the  habit  which  young  ladies  have  of  using  the 
word  amphitheatre  :  "  amphitheatre  of  woods  "  —  "  am- 
phitheatre of  hills,"  —  these  are  their  constant  expres- 
sions. Why  r  Is  it  because  the  word  amphitheatre  is 
a  Grecian  word  ?  We  question  if  one  young  lady  in 
twenty  knows  that  it  is ;  and  very  certain  we  are  that 
no  word  would  recommend  itself  to  her  use  by  that 
origin,  if  she  happened  to  be  aware  of  it.  The  reason 
lurks  here :  —  In  the  word  theatre  is  contained  an 
evanescent  image  of  a  great  audience  —  of  a  populous 
multitude.  Now,  this  image  —  half-withdrawn,  half- 
flashed  upon  the  eye  —  and  combined  with  the  word 
hills  or  forests,  is  thrown  into  powerful  collision  with 
the  silence  of  hills  —  with  the  solitude  of  forests  ; 
each  image,  from  reciprocal  contradiction,  brightens 
and  vivifies  the  other.  The  two  images  act,  and  react, 
by  strcng  repulsion  and  antagonism. 

This  principle  I  might  exemplify,  and  explain  at 
great  length ;  but  I  impose  a  law  of  severe  brevity 
upon  myself.  And  I  have  said  enough.  Out  of  this 
one  principle  of  subtle  and  lurking  antagonism,  may 
be  explained  everything  which  has  been  denounced 
inder  the  idea  of  pedantry  in  Milton.  It  is  the  key 
to  all  that  lavish  pomp  of  art  and  knowledge  which  is 
sometimes  put  forward  by  Milton  in  situations  of  in- 
tense solitude,  and  in  the  bosom  of  primitive  nature  — ■ 
as,  for  example,  in  the  Eden  of  his  great  poem,  and  in 
the  Wilderness  of  his  "  Paradise  Regained."  The 
shadowy  exhibition  of  a  regal  banquet  in  the  desert, 
draws  out  and  stimulates  the  sense  of  its  utter  solitude 
uid  remotion  from  men  or  cities.  The  images  of 
9 


180  iciLTOir. 

architectural  splendor,  suddenly  raised  in  the  very 
centre  of  Paradise,  as  vanishing  shows  by  the  wand  of  a 
magician,  bring  into  powerful  relief  the  depth  of  silence, 
and  the  unpopulous  solitude  which  possess  this  sanc- 
tuary of  man  whilst  yet  happy  and  innocent.  Para- 
dise could  not,  in  any  other  way,  or  by  any  artifice  less 
profound,  have  been  made  to  give  up  its  essential  and 
differential  characteristics  in  a  form  palpable  to  the 
imagination.  As  a  place  of  rest,  it  was  necessary  that 
it  should  be  placed  in  close  collision  with  the  unresting 
strife  of  cities  ;  as  a  place  of  solitude,  with  the  image 
of  tumultuous  crowds ;  as  the  centre  of  mere  natural 
beauty  in  its  gorgeous  prime,  with  the  images  of  elab- 
orate architecture  and  of  human  workmanship  ;  as  a 
place  of  perfect  innocence  in  seclusion,  that  it  should 
be  exhibited  as  the  antagonist  pole  to  the  sin  and 
misery  of  social  man. 

Such  is  the  covert  philosophy  which  governs  Milton's 
practice,  and  which  might  be  illustrated  by  many  scores 
of  passages  from  both  the  "  Paradise  Lost "  and  the 
"  Paradise  Regained."  *  In  fact,  a  volume  might  be 
composed  on  this  one  chapter.     And  yet,  from  the 

♦  For  instance,  this  in  the  key  to  that  image  in  the  '•  Paradise 
Regained,"  where  Satan,  on  first  emerging  into  sight,  is  com- 
pared to  an  old  man  gathering  sticks  "  to  warm  him  on  a  win- 
ter's day."  This  image,  at  first  sight,  seems  little  in  harmony 
with  the  wild  and  awful  character  of  the  supreme  fiend.  No;  it 
is  not  in  harmony;  nor  is  it  meant  to  be  in  harmony.  On  the 
eontrary,  it  is  meant  to  be  in  antagonism  and  intense  repulsion. 
The  household  image  of  old  age,  of  human  infirmity,  and  of  do- 
mestic hearths,  are  all  meant  as  a  machinery  for  provoking  and 
lolioiting  the  fearfiil  idea  to  which  they  are  placed  in  collision 
and  as  so  many  repelling  poles. 


MILTCN.  181 

blindness  or  inconsiderate  examination  of  his  critics, 
this  latent  wisdom  —  this  cryptical  science  of  poetic 
effects  —  in  the  mighty  poet  has  been  misinterpreted, 
and  set  down  to  the  effect  of  defective  skill,  or  even 
of  puerile  ostentation. 

2.  The  second  great  charge  against  Milton  is,  primd 
facie,  even  more  difficult  to  meet.  It  is  the  charge  of 
having  blended  the  Pagan  and  Christian  forms.  The 
great  realities  of  angels  and  archangels  are  continually 
combined  into  the  same  groups  with  the  fabulous  im- 
personations of  the  Greek  mythology.  Eve  is  inter- 
linked in  comparisons  with  Pandora,  with  Aurora,  with 
Proserpine.  Those  impersonations,  however,  may  be 
thought  to  have  something  of  allegoric  meaning  in 
their  conceptions,  which  in  a  measure  corrects  this 
Paganism  of  the  idea.  But  Eve  is  also  compared 
with  Ceres,  with  Hebe,  and  other  fixed  forms  of  Pagan 
superstition.  Other  allusions  to  the  Greek  mythologic 
forms,  or  direct  combination  of  them  with  the  real 
existences  of  the  Christian  heavens,  might  be  produced 
by  scores,  were  it  not  that  we  decline  to  swell  our 
paper  beyond  the  necessity  of  the  case.  Now,  surely 
this  at  least  is  an  error.  Can  there  be  any  answer  to 
this? 

At  one  time  we  were  ourselves  inclined  to  fear  that 
Milton  had  been  here  caught  tripping.  In  this  in- 
stance, at  least,  he  seems  to  be  in  error.  But  there  is 
no  trusting  to  appearances.  In  meditating  upon  the 
question,  we  happened  to  remsmber  that  the  most 
solossal  and  Miltonic  of  painters  had  fallen  into  the 
very  same  fault,  if  fault  it  were.  In  his  "  Last  Judg- 
Vient,"  Michael  Angelo  has  introdur>ed  the  Pagan  deities 


132  MILTON. 

in  connection  with  the  hierarchy  of  the  Christian  heav- 
ens. Now,  it  is  very  true  that  one  great  man  cannot 
palliate  the  error  of  another  great  man,  by  repeating 
the  same  error  himself.  But,  though  it  cannot  avail 
as  an  excuse,  such  a  conformity  of  ideas  serves  as  a 
summons  to  a  much  more  vigilant  examination  of  the 
case  than  might  else  be  instituted.  One  man  might 
err  from  inadvertency ;  but  that  two,  and  both  men 
trained  to  habits  of  constant  meditation,  should  fall  into 
the  same  error  —  makes  the  marvel  tenfold  greater. 

Now  we  confess  that,  as  to  Michael  Angelo,  we  do 
not  pretend  to  assign  the  precise  key  to  the  practice 
which  he  adopted.  And  to  our  feelings,  after  all  that 
might  be  said  in  apology,  there  still  remains  an  im- 
pression of  incongruity  in  the  visual  exhibition  and 
direct  juxtaposition  of  the  two  orders  of  supernatural 
existence  so  potently  repelling  each  other.  But,  as 
regards  Milton,  the  justification  is  complete  ;  it  rests 
upon  the  following  principle  :  — 

In  all  other  parts  of  Christianity,  the  two  orders  of 
superior  beings,  the  Christian  Heaven  and  tl:  e  Pagan 
Pantheon,  are  felt  to  be  incongruous  —  not  as  the  pure 
opposed  to  the  impure  (for,  if  that  were  tht  reason, 
then  the  Christian  fiends  should  be  incongruous  with 
the  angels,  which  they  are  not),  —  but  as  the  unreal 
opposed  to  the  real.  In  all  the  hands  of  other  poets, 
we  feel  that  Jupiter,  Mercury,  Apollo,  Diana,  are  not 
merely  impure  conceptions,  but  that  they  are  baseless 
conceptions,  phantoms  of  air,  nonentities  ;  and  there 
is  much  the  same  object' on,  in  point  of  just  taste,  to 
the  combination  of  such  fabulous  beings  in  the  sam* 
((roups  with  glorified  saints  and  angels,  as  there  is  U 


MILTON.  133 

Ihe  combination,  by   a  painter   or  a  sculptor,  of   real 
flesh-and-blood  creatures,  with  allegoric  abstractions. 

This  is  the  objection  to  such  combination  in  all  other 
poets.  But  this  objection  does  not  apply  to  Milton  : 
it  glances  past  him ;  and  for  the  following  reason  • 
Milton  has  himself  laid  an  early  foundation  for  his 
introduction  of  the  Pagan  Pantheon  into  Christian 
groups  :  the  false  gods  of  the  heathen  world  were,  ac- 
cording to  Milton,  the  fallen  angels.  See  his  inimitable 
account  of  the  fallen  angels  —  who  and  what  they  sub- 
sequently became.  In  itself,  and  even  if  detached  from 
the  rest  of  the  "  Paradise  Lost,"  this  catalogue  is  an 
uZfra-magnificent  poem.  They  are  not  false,  therefore, 
in  the  sense  of  being  unreal,  baseless,  and  having  a 
merely  fantastical  existence  like  our  European  Fairies, 
but  as  having  drawn  aside  mankind  from  a  pure  wor- 
ship. As  ruined  angels  under  other  names,  they  are 
no  less  real  than  the  faithful  and  loyal  angels  of  the 
Christian  heavens.  And  in  that  one  difference  of  the 
Miltonic  creed,  which  the  poet  has  brought  pointedly 
and  elaborately  under  his  reader's  notice  by  his  match- 
less roll-call  of  the  rebellious  angels,  and  of  their 
Pagan  transformations,  in  the  very  first  book  of  the 
"  Paradise  Lost,"  is  laid  beforehand  *  the  amplest  foun- 

*  Other  celebrated  poets  have  laid  no  such  preparatory  foun- 
dations for  their  intermixture  of  heathen  gods  with  the  heavenly 
host  of  the  Christian  revelation;  for  example,  amongst  thou- 
sands of  others,  Tasso,  and  still  more  flagrantly,  Camoens,  who 
IS  not  content  with  allusions  or  references  that  suppose  the  Pagan 
Mythology  still  substantially  existing,  but  absolutely  introduces 
them  as  potent  agencies  amongst  superstitious  and  bigoted  wor- 
ihippers  of  papal  saints.  Consequently,  they,  beyond  all  apology, 
tte  open  to  the  censure  which  for  Milton  is  subtly  evaded. 


154  MILTON. 

dation  for  Ms  subsequent  practice ;  and  at  the  same 
time,  therefore,  the  amplest  answer,  to  the  charge  pre- 
ferred against  him  by  Dr.  Johnson,  and  by  so  many 
other  critics,  who  had  not  sufficiently  penetrated  the 
latent  theory  on  which  he  acted. 


CHARLEMAGNE.* 

HiSTOBY  is  sometimes  treated  under  the  splendid 
conception  of  "  philosophy  teaching  by  example,"  and 
•ome times  as  an  "  old  almanac ;  "  and,  agreeably  to  this 
latter  estimate,  we  ourselves  once  heard  a  celebrated 
living  professor  "f  of  surgery,  who  has  been  since  dis- 
tinguished by  royal  favor,  and  honored  with  a  title, 
making  it  his  boast  that  he  had  never  charged  his 
memory  with  one  single  historical  fact;  that  on  the 
contrary  he  had,  out  of  profound  contempt  for  a  sort  of 
knowledge  so  utterly  without  value  in  his  eyes,  anx- 
iously sought  to  extirpate  from  his  remembrance,  or, 
if  that  were  impossible,  to  perplex  and  confound,  any 
relics  of  historical  records  which  might  happen  to  sur« 
vive  from  his  youthful  studies.  "  And  I  am  happy  to 
Bay,"  added  he,  "  and  it  is  consoling  to  have  it  in  my 
power  conscientiously  to  declare,  that,  although  I  have 
not  been  able  to  dismiss  entirely  from  my  mind  some 
ridiculous  fact  about  a  succession  of  four  great  monar- 
chies, since  human  infirmity  still  clings  to  our  best 
efibrts,  and  will  for  ever  prevent  our  attaining  perfec- 
tion, still  I  have  happily  succeeded  in  so  far  confounding 

•  A  paper  trhich  arose  on  the  suggestion  of  the  History  of 
Charlemagne,  by  Q.  P.  R,  James,  Esq.  London:  Longman  4e 
Co.,  1832. 

t  "  ^  ceUbrmted  living  professor  : "  Living  when  this  WM 
Irritteii. 


136  CH\RLEMAGXK. 

all  distinctions  of  things  and  persons,  of  time  and  of 
places,  that  I  could  not  assign  the  era  of  any  one 
transaction,  as  I  humbly  trust,  within  a  thousand  years. 
The  whole  vast  series  of  history  is  become  a  wilderness 
-o  me  ;  and  my  mind,  as  to  all  such  absurd  knowledge, 
under  the  blessing  of  Heaven,  is  pretty  nearly  a  tabula 
rasa."  I  was  present  at  this  etalage  of  ignorance,  aa 
perhaps  I  may  already  have  informed  the  reader.  And 
the  case  reminded  me  of  one  popularly  ascribed  to 
Orator  Henley,  who,  in  disputing  with  some  careless 
fellow  in  a  coffee-house,  suddenly  arrested  his  noisy 
antagonist  by  telling  him  that  in  one  short  sentence  he 
had  perpetrated  two  enormous  mythologic  blunders, 
having  interchangeably  confounded  Plutus,  the  blind 
god  of  wealth,  with  PliUo,  the  gloomy  tyrant  of  the 
infernal  realms.  "  Confound  them,  have  I  ?  "  said  the 
mythologic  criminal.  "  Well,  so  much  the  better ; 
confound  them  both  for  two  old  rogues."  "  But,"  said 
Henley,  "  you  have  done  them  both  unspeakable 
wrong."  "  With  all  my  heart,"  rejoined  the  other, 
"  they  are  heartily  welcome  to  everything  unspeakable 
below  the  moon :  thank  God,  I  know  very  little  of 
such  ruffians."  "  But  how  ?  "  said  Henley  ;  "  do  I 
understand  you  to  mean  that  you  thank  God  for  your 
ignorance  ?  "  "  Well,  suppose  I  do,""  said  the  re- 
spondent, "  what  have  you  to  do  with  that  ?  "  "  Oh, 
nothing,"  cried  Henley ;  "  only  I  should  say  that  in 
that  case,  you  had  a  great  deal  to  be  thankful  for."  I 
was  young  at  that  time,  little  more  than  a  boy,  and 
thirstily  I  sighed  to  repeat  this  little  story  as  applicable 
to  the  present  case.  In  fact  it  was  too  applicable  ;  ana 
n  case  Sir  Anthony  should  be   of  the  same  opinion,  J 


CHAKL£MA.ON£.  137 

remembered  seasonably  that  the  finished  and  accom- 
plished surgeon  carries  a  pocket  case  of  surgical  imple- 
ments ;  lancets,  for  instance,  that  are  loaded  with  viruh 
in  every  stage  of  contagion.  Might  he  not  inoculate 
me  with  rabies,  with  hydrophobia,  with  the  plague  ol 
Cairo  ?  On  the  whole,  it  seemed  better  to  make  play 
against  Sir  Anthony  with  a  sudden  coruscation  oi 
forked  logic  ;  which  accordingly  I  did,  insisting  upon 
it  that  as  the  true  point  of  ambition  was  now  changed 
for  the  philosophic  student  [the  maximum  of  ignorance 
being  the  goal  aimed  at,  and  no  longer  the  maximum 
of  light],  it  had  become  outrageously  vain-glorious  in 
Sir  Anthony  to  rehearse  the  steps  of  his  own  darkness  ; 
that  we,  the  chance-people  in  Mrs.  Montague's  draw- 
ing-room, were  young  beginners,  novices  that  had  no 
advantages  to  give  us  a  chance  in  such  a  contest  with 
central  darkness  in  the  persons  of  veteran  masters. 
Mrs.  Montague  took  my  side,  and  said  that  I,  for  in- 
Btance,  myself  did  very  well,  considering  how  short  had 
been  my  career  as  regarded  practice,  but  it  was  really 
unfair  to  look  for  perfection  in  a  mere  beginner.  In 
this  Gothic  expression  of  self-congratulation  upon  the 
extent  of  Lis  own  ignorance,  though  doubtless  founded 
upon  what  the  Germans  call  an  einseitig  *  or  one-sided 
estimate,  there  was,  however,  that  sort  of  truth  which 
is  apprehended  only  by  strong  minds,  such  minds  as 
\aturally  adhere  to  extreme  courses.  Certainly  the 
blank  knowledge  of  facts,  which  is  all  that  most  readers 
gather  from  their  historical  studies,  is  a  mere  despotism 

•  Mark,  reader,  the  progress  of  language,  and  consequently 
|f  novel  ideas.  This  was  written  nearly  thirty  years  ago,  and 
It  that  time  the  term  needed  an  apologetic  formula. 


138  CHARLEMAGNE. 

of  rubbish  without  cohesion,  and  resting  upon  no  basii 
Df  theory  (that  is,  of  general  comprehensive  survey) 
applied  to  the  political  development  of  nations,  and 
accounting  for  the  great  stages  of  their  internal  move- 
ments. Rightly  and  profitably  to  understand  history, 
it  ought  to  be  studied  in  as  many  ways  as  it  may  be 
written.  History,  as  a  composition,  falls  into  three 
separate  arrangements,  obeying  three  distinct  laws, 
and  addressing  itself  to  three  distinct  objects.  Its  first 
and  humblest  office  is  to  deliver  a  naked,  unadorned 
exposition  of  public  events  and  their  circumstances. 
This  form  of  history  may  be  styled  the  purely  Narra- 
tive ;  the  second  form  is  that  which  may  be  styled  the 
Scenical ;  and  the  third  the  Philosophic.  What  is 
meant  by  Philosophic  History  is  well  understood  in 
our  present  advanced  state  of  society ;  and  few  histo- 
ries are  written  except  in  the  simplest  condition  of 
human  culture,  which  do  not  in  part  assume  its  func- 
tions, or  which  are  content  to  lest  their  entire  attraction 
upon  the  abstract  interest  of  facts.  The  privileges  of 
this  form  have,  however,  been  greatly  abused  ;  and 
the  truth  of  facts  has  been  so  much  forced  to  bend  be- 
fore preconceived  theories,  whereas  every  valid  theory 
ought  to  be  abstracted  from  the  facts,  that  Mr.  Southey 
and  others  in  this  day  have  set  themselves  to  decry  the 
whole  genus  and  class,  as  essentially  at  war  with  the 
very  primary  purposes  of  the  art.  But,  under  what- 
ever name,  it  is  evident  that  philosophy,  or  an  investi- 
gation of  the  true  moving  forces  in  every  great  train 
tnd  sequence  of  national  events,  and  an  exhibition  o 
the  motives  and  the  moral  consequences  in  their  largeSi 
extent  which  have  concurred  with  these  events,  cannor 


CHABLEHAOXE.  139 

ne  omitted  in  any  history  above  the  level  of  a  childish 
understanding.  Mr.  Southey  himself  will  be  found  to 
Illustrate  this  necessity  by  his  practice,  whilst  assailing 
it  in  principle.  As  to  the  other  mode  of  history,  his- 
tory treated  scenically,  it  is  upon  the  whole  the  most 
delightful  to  the  reader,  and  the  most  susceptible  of 
art  and  ornament  in  the  hands  of  a  skilful  composer. 
The  most  celebrated  specimen  in  the  vulgar  opinion  ia 
the  Decline  and  Fall  of  Gibbon.  And  to  this  claM 
may  in  part  *  be  referred  the  Historical  Sketches  of 
Voltaire.  Histories  of  this  class  proceed  upon  princi- 
ples of  selection,  presupposing  in  the  reader  a  general 
knowledge  of  the  great  cardinal  incidents,  and  bringing 
forward  into  especial  notice  those  only  which  are  sus- 
ceptible of  being  treated  with  distinguished  effect. 

These  are  the  three  separate  modes  of  treating  his- 
tory ;  each  has  its  distinct  purposes  ;   and  all  must 

•  In  part  we  say,  because  in  part  also  the  characteristic  dif- 
ferences of  these  works  depend  upon  the  particular  mode  of  the 
narrative.  For  narration  itself,  as  applied  to  history,  admits  of 
a  triple  arrangement,  dogmatic,  sceptical,  and  critical;  dog- 
matic, which  adopts  the  current  records  without  examination; 
sceptical,  as  Horace  Walpole's  Richard  III.,  Malcolm  Laing's 
Dissertation  on  Perkin  Warbeck,  or  on  the  Gowrie  Con- 
spiracy, which  expressly  undertakes  to  probe  and  try  the  unsound 
parts  of  the  story;  and  critical,  which,  after  an  examination  ol 
this  nature,  selects  from  the  whole  body  of  materials  such  as  are 
eoherent.  There  is  besides  another  ground  of  difiference  in  the 
quality  of  historical  narratives  —  viz.,  between  those  which  move 
by  means  of  great  public  events,  and  those  which  (like  the  Cfl»- 
•ars  of  Suetonius  and  the  French  Memoirs),  postulating  aU  such 
capital  events  as  are  necessarily  already  known,  and  keeping 
them  in  the  background,  crowd  their  foreground  with  those  per^ 
Kna]  and  dome«tio  notices  which  we  call  anecdotes. 


140  CHARLEMAGNE. 

contribute  to  make  up  a  comprehensivt  total  of  his- 
torical knowledge.  The  first  furnishes  the  facts  ;  the 
second  opens  a  thousand  opportunities  for  'pictures  oi 
manners  and  national  temper  in  every  stage  of  their 
growth  ;  whilst  the  third  abstracts  the  political  or  the 
othical  moral,  and  unfolds  the  philosophy  which  knita 
the  history  of  one  nation  to  that  of  others,  and  exhibits  | 
the  whole  under  their  internal  connection,  as  parts  of 
one  great  process,  carrying  on  the  great  economy  of 
human  improvement  by  many  stages  in  many  regione 
at  one  and  the  same  time. 

Pursued  upon  this  comprehensive  scale,  the  study  of 
history  is  the  study  of  human  nature.  But  some  have 
continued  to  reject  it,  not  upon  any  objection  to  the 
quality  of  the  knowledge  gained,  but  simply  on  the 
ground  of  its  limited  extent ;  contending  that  in  public 
and  political  transactions,  such  as  compose  the  matter 
of  history,  human  nature  exhibits  itself  upon  too  nar- 
row a  scale  and  under  too  monotonous  an  aspect ;  that 
under  different  names,  and  in  connection  with  different 
dates  and  regions,  events  virtually  the  same  are  con- 
tinually revolving  ;  that  whatever  novelty  may  strike 
the  ear,  in  passages  of  history  taken  from  periods 
widely  remote,  affects  the  names  only,  and  circum- 
stances that  are  extra-essential  ;  that  the  passions 
meantime,  the  motives,  and  (allowing  for  difference  of 
manners)  the  means  even,  are  subject  to  no  variety  ; 
that  in  ancient  or  in  modern  history  there  is  no  real 
accession  made  to  our  knowledge  of  human  nature  • 
but  that  all  proceeds  by  cycles  of  endless  repetition 
and  in  fact  that,  according  to  the  old  complaint,  "  there 
18  nothing  new  under  the  sun." 


chabl£mag:n£.  141 

It  is  not  true  that  "  there  is  nothing  new  under  the 
jun."  This  is  the  complaint,  as  all  men  know,  of  a 
iaded  voluptuary,  seeking  for  a  new  pleasure  and  find- 
ing none,  for  reasons  which  lay  in  his  own  vitiated 
nature.  Why  did  he  seek  for  novelty  ?  Because  old 
pleasures  had  ceased  to  stimulate  his  exhausted  organs ; 
and  that  was  reason  enough  why  no  new  pleasure,  had 
any  been  found,  would  operate  as  such  for  him.  The 
weai-iness  of  spirit  and  the  poverty  of  pleasure,  which 
he  bemoaned  as  belonging  to  our  human  condition, 
were  not  in  reality  objective  (as  a  German  philosopher 
would  express  himself),  or  laid  in  the  nature  of  things, 
and  thus  pressing  upon  all  alike,  but  subjective,  that 
is  to  say,  derived  from  the  peculiar  state  and  affections 
of  his  own  organs  for  apprehending  pleasure.  Not  the 
TO  apprehensibile,  but  the  zo  apprehendens,  was  in 
fault ;  not  the  pleasures,  or  the  dewy  freshness  of 
pleasures  had  decayed,  but  the  sensibilities  of  him  who 
thus  undertook  to  appraise  them  were  biases  and  ex- 
hausted. 

More  truly  and  more  philosophically,  it  may  be  said 
that  there  is  nothing  old  under  the  sun,  no  absolute 
repetition.     It  is  the  well  known  doctrine  of  Leibnitz,* 

*  Leibnitz  (who  was  iioice  in  England),  when  walking  in 
Kensington  Gardens  with  the  Princess  of  Wales,  whose  admira- 
tion oscillated  between  this  great  countryman  of  her  own  and 
Bir  Isaac  Newton,  the  corresponding  idol  of  her  adopted  country, 
took  occasion,  from  the  beautiful  scene  about  them,  to  explain 
In  a  lively  way,  and  at  the  same  time  to  illustrate  and  verify 
this  favorite  thesis  .  Turning  to  a  gentleman  in  attendance  upon 
aer  Royal  Highness,  he  challenged  him  to  produce  two  leaves 
from  any  tree  or  shrub,  which  should  be  exact  duplicates  or  fac- 
umiles  of  each  other  in  those  lines  which  variegate  the  sur&ce 


[42  CHARIiEMAGNK. 

that  amongst  the  familiar  objects  of  our  daily  experi- 
ence, there  is  no  perfect  identity.  All  in  external  na- 
ture proceeds  by  endless  variety.  Infinite  change, 
illimitable  novelty,  inexhaustible  difference,  these  are 
the  foundations  upon  which  nature  builds  and  ratifies 
her  purpose  of  individuality  ;  so  indispensable,  amongst 
a  thousand  other  great  uses,  to  the  very  elements  oi 
social  distinctions  and  social  rights.  But  for  the  end- 
less circumstances  of  difference  which  characterize 
external  objects,  the  rights  of  property,  for  instance, 
would  have  stood  upon  no  certain  basis,  nor  admitted 
of  any  general  or  comprehensive  guarantee. 

As  with  external  objects,  so  with  human  actions : 
amidst  their  infinite  approximations  and  affinities,  they 
are  separated  by  circumstances  of  never-ending  diver- 
sity. History  may  furnish  her  striking  correspondences, 
biography  her  splendid  parallels  ;  Rome  may  in  certain 
cases  appear  but  the  mirror  of  Athens,  England  of 
Rome  ;  and  yet,  after  all,  no  character  can  be  cited, 
DO  great  transaction,  no  revolution  of  "high- viced 
cities,"  no  catastrophe  of  nations,  which,  in  the  midst 
of  its  resemblances  to  distant  correspondences  in  other 

The  challenge  was  accepted ;  but  the  result  justified  Leibnitz.  It 
IS  in  fact  upon  this  infinite  variety  in  the  superficial  lines  of  the 
human  palm,  that  palmistry  is  grounded  (or  the  science  of  divi- 
nation by  the  hieroglyphics  written  on  each  man's  hand),  and 
has  its  prima  facie  justification.  Were  it  otherwise,  this  mode 
»f  divination  would  not  have  even  a  plausible  sanction ;  for,  with- 
out the  inexhaustible  varieties  which  are  actually  found  in  th« 
combination  of  these  lines,  and  which  give  te  each  separate  indi 
vidual  his  own  separate  type,  the  same  identical  fortunes  niuai 
be  often  repeated;  and  there  would  be  no  foundation  for  assign 
mg  to  each  his  peculiar  and  characteristic  destiny. 


CHA.SL£MAGM£.  \AA 

fcges,  does  not  include  features  of  abundant  di$;tinction 
and  individualizing  characteristics,  so  many  and  so  im- 
portant, as  to  yield  its  own  peculiar  matter  for  philo- 
Bophical  meditation  and  its  own  separate  moral.  Rare 
is  the  case  in  history,  or  (to  speak  with  suitable  bold- 
ness) there  is  none,  which  does  not  involve  circum- 
stances capable  to  a  learned  eye,  without  any  external 
aid  from  chronology,  of  referring  it  to  its  own  age. 
The  doctrine  of  Leibnitz,  on  the  grounds  of  individu- 
ality in  the  objects  of  sense,  may,  in  fact,  be  profitably 
extended  to  all  the  great  political  actions  of  mankind. 
Many  pass,  in  a  popular  sense,  for  pure  transcripts  or 
duplicates  of  similar  cases  in  past  times ;  but,  accu- 
rately speaking,  none  are  such  truly  and  substantially. 
Neither  are  the  difierences  by  which  they  are  severally 
marked  and  featured  interesting  only  to  the  curiosity 
or  to  the  spirit  of  minute  research.  All  public  acts,  in 
the  degree  in  which  they  are  great  and  comprehensive, 
are  steeped  in  living  feelings  and  saturated  with  Ah^ 
spirit  of  their  own  age ;  and  the  features  of  their 
individuality,  that  is,  the  circumstances  which  chiefly 
distinguish  them  from  their  nearest  parallels  in  other 
times,  and  chiefly  prevent  them  from  lapsing  into  blank 
repetitions  of  the  same  identical  case,  are  generally  the 
very  cardinal  points,  the  organs,  and  the  dejtositories 
•vhich  lodge  whatever  best  expresses  the  temper  and 
tendencies  of  the  age  to  which  tney  belong.  So  far 
are  these  special  points  of  distinction  from  being  slight 
or  trivial,  that  in  them  par  excellence  is  gathered  and 
concentrated  whatever  a  political  philosopher  would 
be  best  pleased  to  insulate  and  to  converge  within  hie 
field  of  view. 


144  CHABLEMAONE. 

This,  indeed  is  evident  upon  consideration ;  and  is 
in  some  sense  implied  in  the  very  verbal  enunciation  of 
the  proposition :  vi  termini,  it  should  strike  every  man 
who  reflects,  that  in  great  national  transactions  of  dif- 
ferent ages,  so  f*r  resembling  each  other  as  to  merit  the 
description  of  parallels,  all  the  circumstances  of  agree- 
ment, all  those  which  compose  the  resemblance,  for  the 
ery  reason  that  they  are  common  to  both  periods  of 
time,  specially  and  characteristically  belong  to  neither. 
It  is  the  differential,  and  not  the  common,  the  points 
of  special  dissimilitude,  not  those  of  general  similitude, 
w^hich  manifestly  must  be  looked  to  for  the  philosophic 
valuation  of  the  times  or  the  people,  for  the  adjudication 
of  their  peculiar  claims  in  a  comparison  with  other 
times  and  other  people,  and  for  the  appraisement  of  the 
progress  made,  whether  positively  for  its  total  amount, 
or  relatively  to  itself,  for  its  rate  of  advance  at  each 
separate  stage. 

It  is  in  this  way  of  critical  examination,  that  com- 
parison and  the  collation  of  apparent  parallels,  from 
being  a  pure  amusement  of  ingenuity,  rises  to  a  philo- 
sophic labor,  and  that  the  study  of  history  becomes  at 
once  dignified,  and  in  a  most  practical  sense  profitable. 
It  is  the  opinion  of  the  subtlest  and  the  most  combining 
(if  not  the  most  useful)  philosopher  whom  England 
has  produced,  that  a  true  knowledge  of  history  confers 
the  gift  of  prophecy ;  or  that  intelligently  and  saga- 
ciously to  have  looked  backwards,  is  potentially  to 
have  looked  forwards.  For  example,  he  is  of  opinion 
that  any  student  of  the  great  English  civil  war  in  the 
reign  of  Charles  I.,  who  should  duly  have  noted  the 
»igns  precurrent  and  concurrent  of  those  days,  ana 


CHABLEHAGNE.  145 

should  also  have  read  the  contemporary  political  pam- 
phlets, coming  thus  prepared,  could  not  have  failed, 
after  a  corresponding  study  of  the  French  literature 
from  1750  to  1788,  and,  in  particular,  after  collecting 
the  general  sense  and  temper  of  the  French  people 
from  the  Cahiers  (or  codes  of  instruction  transmitted 
by  the  electoral  bodies  to  the  members  of  the  first 
National  Assembly),  to  foresee  in  clear  succession  the 
long  career  of  revolutionary  frenzy,  which  soon  after- 
wards deluged  Europe  with  tears  and  blood.  This  may 
perhaps  be  conceded,  and  without  prejudice  to  the 
doctrine  just  now  delivered,  of  endless  diversity  in 
political  events.  For  it  is  certain  that  the  political 
movements  of  nations  obey  everlasting  laws,  and  travel 
through  the  stages  of  known  cycles,  which  thus  in- 
sure enough  of  resemblance  to  guarantee  the  general 
outline  of  a  sagacious  prophecy  ;  whilst,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  times,  the  people,  and  the  extraordinary 
minds  which,  in  such  critical  eras,  soon  reveal  them- 
selves at  the  head  of  affairs,  never  fail  of  producing 
their  appropriate  and  characteristic  results  of  difFei- 
ence.  Sameness  enough  there  will  always  be  to  en- 
courage the  true  political  seer,  with  difference  enough 
to  confer  upon  each  revolution  its  own  separate  char- 
acter and  its  peculiar  interest. 

All  this  is  strikingly  illustrated  in  the  history  of  those 
great  revolutionary  events  which  belong  to  the  lifff 
and  times  of  thr  Emperor  Charlemagne.  If  any  one 
period  in  history  might  be  supposed  to  offer  a  barren 
and  unprofitable  picture  of  war,  rapine  and  bloodshed, 
unfeatured  by  characteristic  differences,  and  unimproved 
.»y  any  peculiar  moral,  it  is  this  section  of  the  Euro- 
10 


146  CUAHLEMAQNE. 

ptsan  annals.  Removed  from  our  present  times  by  a 
thojsand  years,  divided  from  us  by  the  profound  gulf 
of  what  we  usually  denominate  the  dark  ages;  placed, 
in  fact,  entirely  upon  the  farther  *  side  of  that  great 
barrier,  this  period  of  history  can  hardly  be  expected 
to  receive  much  light  from  contemporary  documents 
in  an  age  so  generally  illiterate.  Not  from  national 
archives,  or  state  papers,  when  diplomacy  was  so  rare, 
when  so  large  a  proportion  of  its  simple  transactions 
was  conducted  by  personal  intercourse,  and  after  the 
destruction  wrought  amongst  its  slender  chancery  of 
written  memorials  by  the  revolution  of  one  entire  mil- 
lennium. Still  less  could  we  have  reason  to  hope  for 
much  light  from  private  memoirs  at  a  period  when  the 
means  of  writing  were  as  slenderly  diffused  as  the 
motives ;  when  the  rare  endowments,  natural  and  ac- 
quired, for  composing  history  could  so  seldom  happen 
to  coincide  with  the  opportunities  for  obtaining  accurate 
information ;  when  the  writers  were  so  few,  and  the 
audience  so  limited,  to  which  any  writers  soever  could 
then  profitably  address  themselves.  With  or  without 
illustration,  however,  the  age  itself  and  its  rapid  suc- 
cession of  wars  between  barbarous  and  semi-barbarous 
tribes,  might,  if  any  one  chapter  in  history,  be  pxe» 
bumed  barren  of  either  interest  or  instruction,  weari- 
somely monotonous ;  and,  by  comparison  with  any 
parallel  section  from  the  records  of  other  nations  in 
the  earliest  stages  of  dawning  civilization,  offering  no 

*  According  to  the  general  estimate  of  philosophical  history 
the  tenth  century  (or  perhaps  the  tenth  and  the  eleventh  ooq. 
(ointly)  must  be  regarded  as  the  true  meridian,  or  the  perfect 
Qudiu|;ht,  of  the  dark  ages. 


CHABLESIAONE.  147 

»ne  feature  of  novelty  beyoiid  the  namet  of  the  com- 
batants, their  local  and  chronological  relations,  anu  the 
peculiar  accidents  and  unimportan*;  circumstances  of 
variety  in  the  conduct  or  issue  of  the  several  battles 
which  they  fought. 

Yet,  in  contradiction  to  all  these  very  plausible  pre- 
sumptions, even  this  remote  period  teems  v?ith  its  own 
peculiar  and  separate  instruction.  It  is  the  first  great 
station,  so  to  speak,  which  we  reach  after  entering 
the  portals  of  modern  •  history.  It  presents  us  with 
the  evolution  and  propagation  of  Christianity  in  its 
present  central  abodes  ;  with  the  great  march  of  civili- 
zation, and  the  gathering  within  the  pale  of  that 
mighty  agency  for  elevating  human  nature,  and  be- 
jeath  the  gentle  yoke  of  the  only  true  and  beneficent 
religion,  of  the  last  rebellious  recusants  among  the 
European  family  of  nations.  "We  meet,  also,  in  con- 
junction with  the  other  steps  of  the  vast  humanizing 
process  then  going  on,  the  earliest  efforts  at  legislation, 

*  It  has  repeatedly  been  made  a  question,  at  what  era  we  ought 
U  date  the  transition  from  ancient  to  modern  history.  This 
question  merits  a  separate  dissertation.  Meantime  it  is  sufficient 
M  say  in  this  place,  that  Justinian  in  the  sixth  century  will 
ananimously  be  referred  to  the  ancient  division,  Charlemagne  in 
the  eighth  to  the  modern.  These,  then,  are  two  limits  fixed  in  each 
direction;  and  somewhere  between  them  must  he  the  frontier 
line.  Now  the  era  of  Mahomet  in  the  seventh  century  is  evidently 
the  exact  and  perfect  line  of  demarcation ;  not  only  as  pretty 
nearly  bisecting  the  debatable  ground,  but  also  because  the  rise 
■»f  the  Mohammedan  power,  as  operating  so  powerfully  upon 
the  Christian  kingdoms  of  the  south,  and  through  them  upon 
the  whole  of  Christendom,  at  that  time  beginning  to  mould 
themselves  and  to  knit,  marks  in  the  n»ost  eminent  sense  the 
birth  of  a  new  era. 


148  CHABI.EMAGNE. 

recording,  at  the  same  time,  the  barbarous  condition 
of  those  for  whom  they  were  designed,  and  the  anti- 
barbarous  views,  alien  or  exotic,  of  the  legislator,  in 
the  midst  of  his  condescensions  to  the  infirmities  oi 
his  subjects.  Here  also  we  meet  with  the  elementary 
state,  growing  and  as  yet  imperfectly  rooted,  of  feudal- 
ism. Here,  too,  we  behold  in  their  incunabula,  form- 
ing and  arranging  themselves  under  the  pressure  of 
circumstances,  the  existing  kingdoms  of  Christendom. 
So  far  then  from  being  a  mere  echo,  or  repetition,  oi 
analogous  passages  in  history,  the  period  of  Charle- 
magne is  novel  to  the  extent  of  ambitious  originality 
in  its  instruction,  and  almost  unique  in  the  quality  oi 
that  instruction.  For  here  only  perhaps  we  see  the 
social  system  forming  itself  in  the  mine,  and  the  very 
process,  as  it  were,  of  crystallization  going  on  beneath 
our  eyes.  Mr.  James,  therefore,  may  be  regarded  as 
not  less  fortunate  in  the  choice  of  his  subject,  than 
meritorious  in  its  treatment ;  indeed,  his  work  is  not 
80  much  the  best,  as  the  only  history  of  Charlemagne 
which  will  hereafter  be  cited.  For  it  reposes  upon  a 
far  greater  body  of  research  and  collation,  than  has 
hitherto  been  applied*  even  in  France,  to  this  inter- 
•isting  theme  ;  and  in  effect  it  is  the  first  account  of  the 
^reat  emperor  and  his  times  which  can,  with  a  due 
raluation  of  the  term,  be  complimented  with  the  title 
uf  a  critical  memoir. 

Charlemagne,   "  the   greatest   man   of   the   middle 

•  Or,  in  fiwt,  than  is  likely  to  manifest  itself  to  an  unlearned 
reader  of  Mr.  James's  own  book;  for  he  has  omitted  to  load  his 
margin  with  references  to  authorities  in  many  scores  of  instanoei 
where  he  might,  and  perhaps  where  he  ought,  to  have  accredited 
\iM  narrative  by  those  indications  of  research. 


CHABLEMAONS.  14S 

ages,"  in  the  judgment  of  liis  present  biographer,  was 
born  A.  D.  742,  seven  years  before  his  father  assumed 
the  name  of  king.     This  date  has  been  disputed ;  but, 
on  the  whole,  we  may  take  it  as  settled,  upon  various 
collateral  computations,  that  the  year  now  assigned  is 
the  true  one.     The  place  is  less  certain ;  but  we  do 
not  think  Mr.  James  warranted  in  saying  that  it  is 
"  unknown,"  if  everything  is  to  be  pronounced  "  un- 
known," for  which  there  is  no  absolute  proof  of  a 
kind  to  satisfy  forensic  rules  of   evidence,  or  which 
has  ever  been  made  a  question  for  debate,  in  that  case 
we  may  apply  a  sponge  to  the  greater  part  of  history 
before    the   era    of    printing.     Aix-la-Chapelle,    Mr. 
James  goes  on  to  tell  us,  is  implied  as  the  birthplace 
in  one  of  the  chief  authorities.     But  our  own  impres- 
sion is,  that  according  to  the  general  belief  of  succeed- 
ing ages,  it  was  not  Aix-la-Chapelle,  but  Ingelheim,  a 
village  near   Mentz,  to   which  that  honor  belonged. 
Some  have  supposed  that  Carlsburg,  in  Bavaria,  was 
the  true  place  of  his  birth ;  and,  indeed,  that  it  drew 
its    name  from  that   distinguished  event.     Frantzius, 
in  particular,  says,  that  in  his  day  the  castle  of  that 
place  was  still  shown  to  travellers  with  the  reverential 
interest  attached  to  such  a  pretension.     But,  after  all, 
he  gives  his  own  vote  for  Ingelheim ;  and  it  is  singular 
that  he  does  not  so  much  as  mention  Aix-la-Chapelle. 
v')f  his  education  and  his  early  years,  Mr.  James  is  of 
opinion  that  we  know  as  little  as  of  his  birthplace. 
Certainly  our  information  upon   these   particulars   is 
neither  full  nor  circumstantial ;  yet  we  know  as  much, 
perhaps,  in  these  respects,  of  Charlemagne  as  of  Na- 
poleon Bonaparte.     And  remarkable  enough  it  is,  that 


150  CHARLEMAGNK. 

not  relatively  (or  making  allowances  for  the  age),  but 
ftbsolutely,  Charlemagne  was  much  more  accomplished 
than  Napoleon  in  the  ordinary  business  of  a  modem 
education  ;  Charlemagne,  in  the  middle  of  the  eighth 
century,  than  Napoleon  in  the  latter  end  of  the  eigh- 
teenth. Charlemagne  was,  in  fact,  the  most  accom- 
plished man  of  his  age  ;  Napoleon  a  sciolist  for  any 
age.  The  tutor  of  Charlemagne  was  Peter  of  Pisa,  « 
man  eminent  at  that  time  for  his  attainments  in  liter- 
ature (in  re  grammatica).  From  him  it  was  that  Char- 
lemagne learned  Latin  and  Greek  ;  Greek  in  such  a 
degree  "  ut  sufficienter  intelligeret,"  and  Latin  to  the 
extent  of  using  it  familiarly  and  fluently  in  conversa- 
tion. Now,  as  to  the  man  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
Gieek  was  to  him  as  much  a  sealed  language  as 
Chinese  ;  and,  even  with  regard  to  Latin,  his  own 
secretary  doubts  upon  one  occasion,  whether  he  wero 
sufficiently  master  of  it  to  translate  Juvenal's  expres- 
Bive  words  of  Panem  et  Cir censes.  Yet  he  had  enjoyed 
the  benefits  of  an  education  in  a  royal  college,  in  a 
country  which  regards  itself  self-complacently  as  at 
the  head  of  civilization.  Again,  there  is  a  pretty 
strong  tradition  (which  could  hardly  arise  but  upon 
some  foundation),  that  Charlemagne  had  cultivated  the 
Arabic  so  far  as  to  talk  it,*  having  no  motive  to  that 
attainment  more  urgent  than   that  politcal  considera- 

•  "  Arabice  loquutum  esse  Aigolando  Saracenorum  regult, 
Parpinas  (the  famous  Archbishop)  auctor  eat;  nee  id  fide  indig- 
Dum.  Dam  enira  in  expeditione  Hispanica  prsecipuam  belU 
paoiem  in  ilium  vertit,  facile  temporis  tractu  notitiam  lingua 
noi  oomparare  potuit"  —  Frantz.  Hist.  Car.  Mag.  That  is 
fee  had  time  sufficient  tssr  this  acquiaitiou,  and  a  motive  iiuHiciout 


CHARLEMAGNE.  161 

tions  made  it  eligible  for  him  to  undertake  an  expedi- 
tion against  those  who  could  negotiate  in  no  other 
language.  Now,  let  it  be  considered  how  very  much 
more  powerful  arguments  there  were  in  Napoleon's 
position  for  mastering  the  German  and  the  English. 
His  continental  policy  moved  entirely  upon  the  pivot 
of  central  Europe,  that  is,  the  German  system  of  na- 
tions, the  great  federation  of  powers  upon  the  Rhine 
and  the  Danube.  And,  as  to  England,  his  policj'  and 
his  passions  alike  pointed  in  that  direction  as  uniformly 
and  as  inevitably  as  the  needle  to  the  pole :  every 
morning,  we  are  told,  tossing  aside  the  Paris  journals 
as  so  manj'  babbling  echoes  of  his  own  public  illusions, 
expressing  rather  what  was  desired,  than  what  was 
probable,  he  required  of  his  secretary  that  he  should 
read  off  into  French  the  leading  newspapers  of  Eng- 
land. And  many  were  the  times  when  he  started  up 
in  fury,  and  passionately  taxed  his  interpreter  with 
mistranslation ;  sometimes  as  softening  the  expressions, 
sometimes  as  over-coloring  their  violence.  Evidently 
he  lay  at  the  mercy  of  one  whom  he  knew  to  be  want- 
ing in  honor,  and  who  had  it  in  his  power,  either  by 
way  of  abetting  any  sinister  views  of  his  own,  or  in 
collusion  with  others,  to  suppress,  to  add,  to  garble, 
Mid  in  every  possible  way  to  color  and  distort  what  he 
was  interpreting.  Yet  neither  could  this  humiliating 
■ense  of  dependency  on  the  one  hand,  nor  the  instant 
pressure  of  political  interest  on  the  other,  ever  urge 
Napoleon  to  the  effort  of  learning  English  in  the  first 
ease,  German  or  Spanish  in  the  second.  Charlemagne 
kgain  cultivated  most  strenously  and  successfully,  as 
to  accomplishment  peculiarly  belonging  t:>  the  func- 


t52  CHARLEMAOXE. 

tions  of  his  high  station,  the  art  and  practice  uf  elo- 
quence ;  and  he  had  this  reward  of  his  exertions  — 
that  he  was  accounted  the  most  eloquent  man  of  his 
age :  "  totis  viribus  ad  orationem  exercendam  conver- 
Bus  naturalem  facundiam  ita  roboravit  studio,  ut  prse- 
ter  [1.  propter^  promptum  ac  profluens  sermonis  genus 
facile  cBvi  sui  eloguentissimus  crederetur."  Turn  to, 
Bonaparte.  It  was  a  saying  of  his  sycophants,  that  he 
sometimes  spoke  like  a  god,  and  sometimes  worse  than 
the  feeblest  of  mortals.  But,  says  one  who  knew  hira 
well,  —  the  mortal  I  have  often  heard,  unfortunately 
never  yet  the  god.  He,  who  sent  down  this  sneer  to 
posterity,  was  at  Napoleon's  right  hand  on  the  most 
memorable  occasion  of  his  whole  career  —  that  cardi- 
nal occasion,  as  we  may  aptly  term  it  (for  upon  that 
his  whole  fortunes  hinged),  when  he  intruded  violently 
upon  the  Legislative  Body,  dissolved  the  Directory, 
and  effected  the  revolution  of  the  eighteenth  Brumaire. 
That  revolution  it  was  which  raised  him  to  the  Consu- 
lar power  ;  and  by  that  revolution,  considered  in  its 
manner  and  style,  we  may  judge  of  Napoleon  in  sev- 
eral of  his  chief  pretensions  —  courage,  presence  of 
mind,  dignity,  and  eloquence  ;  for  then,  if  ever,  these 
|ualities  were  all  in  instant  requisition ;  one  word 
iffectually  urged  by  the  antagonist  parties,  a  breath,  a 
gesture,  a  nod,  suitably  followed  up,  would  have  made 
the  total  difference  between  ruler  of  France  and  a  traitor 
kurried  away  a  la  lanterne.  It  is  true,  that  the  misera- 
ble imbecility  of  all  who  should  have  led  the  hostiel 
parties,  the  irresolution  and  the  quiet-loving  temper  of 
Moreau,  the  base  timidity  of  Bernadotto,  in  fact,  the 
'otal   defect  of  heroic  minds  amongst  the  French  o 


CHA.RLEMAONE.  155 

.hat  day,  neutralized  the  defects  and  more  than  com- 
pensated the  blunders  of  Napoleon.  But  these  were 
advantages  that  could  not  be  depended  on :  a  glass 
of  brandy  extraordinary  might  have  emboldened  the 
greatest  poltroon  to  do  that  which,  by  once  rousing  a 
movement  of  popular  enthusiasm,  once  making  a  be- 
ginning in  that  direction,  would  have  precipitated  the 
whole  affair  into  hands  which  must  have  carried  it  far 
beyond  the  power  of  any  party  to  control.  Never, 
according  to  all  human  calculation,  were  eloquence  and 
presence  of  mind  so  requisite  ;  never  was  either  so 
deplorably  wanting.  A  passionate  exposition  of  the 
national  degradations  inflicted  by  the  imbecility  of  the 
directors,  an  appeal  to  the  assembly  as  Frenchmen, 
contrasting  the  glories  of  1796  with  the  Italian  disas- 
ters that  had  followed,  might,  by  connecting  the  new 
candidate  for  power  with  the  public  glory,  and  the 
existing  rulers  with  all  the  dishonors  which  had  settled 
on  the  French  banners,  have  given  an  electric  shock  to 
the  patriotism  of  the  audience,  such  as  would  have 
been  capable  for  the  moment  of  absorbing  their  feel- 
ings as  partisans.  In  a  French  assembly,  movements 
"»f  that  nature,  under  a  momentary  impulse,  are  far 
from  being  uncommon.  Here  then,  if  never  before, 
here,  if  never  again,  the  grandeur  of  the  occasion 
demanded  —  almost,  we  might  say,  implored,  and 
clamorously  invoked,  the  efiectual  powers  of  eloquence 
\nd  perfect  self-possession.  How  was  the  occasion 
met  ?  Let  us  turn  to  the  actual  scene,  as  painted  in 
lively  colors  by  a  friend  and  an  eye-witness  :  *  —  "  The 

•  Not  haying  the  French  original  of  Bourrienne's  work,  m 
V«  compelled  to  quote  from  the  current  translation,  which,  howo 


154  CHASLEMAONE. 

Accounts  brought  every  instant  to  General  Bonaparte 
determined  him  to  enter  the  hall  [of  the  Ancients]  am 
take  part  in  the  debate.  His  entrance  was  hasty,  and 
ID  anger ;  no  favorable  prognostics  of  what  he  would 
Bay.  The  passage  by  which  we  entered  led  directly 
forward  into  the  middle  of  the  house  ;  our  backs  were 
towards  the  door  ;  Bonaparte  had  the  President  on  his 
right ;  he  could  not  see  him  quite  in  front.  I  found 
myself  on  the  General's  right ;  our  clothes  touched : 
Berthier  was  on  his  left.  All  the  harangues  composed 
for  Bonaparte  after  the  event  differ  from  each  other : 
no  miracle  that.  There  was,  in  fact,  none  pronounced 
to  the  ancients ;  unless  a  broken  conversation  with  the 
President,  carried  on  without  nobleness,  propriety,  or 

ever,  is  everywhere  incorrect,  and  in  a  degree  absolutely  aston- 
ishing, and,  where  not  incorrect,  offensive  from  vulgarisms  or 
ludicrous  expressions.  Thus,  it  translates  «ra  drole,  a  droll  fellow, 
wide  as  the  poles  from  the  true  meaning;  ce  drole-la  means  that 
scoundrel.  Again,  the  verb  devoir,  in  all  tenses  (that  eternal 
Btumbling-block  to  bad  French  scholars),  is  uniformly  mistrans- 
latod.  As  an  instance  of  ignoble  language,  at  p.  294,  vol.  i.,  he 
says,  "  Josephine  was  delighted  with  the  disposition  of  her  good- 
man,"  a  word  used  only  by  underbred  people.  But  of  all  the 
absurdities  which  disfigure  the  work,  what  follows  is  perhaps  the 
most  striking:  —  •'  Kleber,"  he  gays,  •'  took  a  precognition  ol 
the  army,"  p.  231,  vol.  i.  A  precognition!  What  Pagan  cere- 
mony may  that  be  ?  Know,  reader,  that  this  monster  of  a  word 
is  a  technical  term  of  Scotch  law;  and  even  to  the  Scotch, 
excepting  those  few  who  know  a  little  of  law,  absolutely  unin- 
telligible. In  speaking  thus  harshly,  we  are  far  from  meaning 
ftnythmg  unkind  to  the  individual  translator,  whom,  on  the 
contrary,  for  his  honorable  tentiments  in  relation  to  the  merit* 
of  Bonaparte,  we  greatly  respect.  But  that  has  nothing  to  dt 
mth  French  translation  —  the  condition  of  which,  in  this  country 
Is  perfectly  scandalous. 


CHA.BL£MAaNK.  155 

i?ignity,  may  be  called  a  speech.  We  heard  only  these 
vords  — '  Brothers  in  arms  — frankness  of  a  soldier-^ 
The  interrogatories  of  the  President  were  clear.  No- 
.hing  could  be  more  confused  or  worse  enounced  than 
the  ambiguous  and  disjointed  replies  of  Bonaparte.  He 
Bpoke  incoherently  :tf  rolcanoes  —  secret  agitations  — 
\rictories  —  constitution  violated.  He  found  fault  even 
with  the  18  th  Fructidor,  of  which  he  had  himself  been 
the  prime  instigator  and  most  powerful  upholder." 
[Not,  reader,  observe,  from  bold  time-serving  neglect 
of  his  own  principles,  but  from  absolute  distraction  of 
mind,  and  incoherency  of  purpose.]  "  Then  came 
Ccesar  —  Cromwell  —  Tyrant "  —  [allusions  which,  of 
all  others,  were  the  most  unseasonable  for  that  crisis, 
and  for  his  position.]  "  He  repeated  several  times  — 
/  have  no  more  than  that  to  tell  you  ;  and  he  had  told 
:hem  nothing.  Then  out  came  the  words,  —  Liberty, 
Equality  :  for  these  every  one  saw  he  had  not  come  to 
St.  Cloud.  Then  his  action  became  animated,  and  we 
lost  him  —  comprehending  nothing  beyond  ISth  Fruc- 
tidor, SOth  Prairial,  hypocrites,  intriguers ;  I  am  not 
$0  ;  I  shall  declare  all ;  I  will  abdicate  the  power  when 
the  danger  which  threatens  the  Republic  has  passed." 
Then,  after  further  instances  of  Napoleon's  falsehood, 
and  the  self-contradictory  movements  of  his  disjointed 
babble,  the  secretary  goes  on  thus  :  "  These  interrup- 
tions, apostrophes,  and  interrogations,  overwhelmed 
him  ;  he  believed  himself  lost.  The  disapprobation 
became  more  violent,  and  his  discourse  still  more 
wanting  in  method  and  coherence.  Sometimes  he  ad- 
dressed the  representatives  quite  stultified  ;  sometimes 
<he  military  in  the  court  [».  «.,  outside],  who  were  be- 


l56  CHABT.EICAOKE. 

fond  hearing  ;  then,  without  any  transition,  he  spoke 
of  the  thunder  of  war,  saying,  I  am  accompanied  by 
the  god  of  war  and  fortune.  The  President  then  calralj 
observed  to  him,  that  he  found  nothing,  absolutely  no- 
thing, upon  which  they  could  deliberate ;  that  all  he 
bad  said  was  vague.  Explain  yourself,  unfold  the  plots 
into  which  you  have  been  invited  to  enter.  Bonaparte 
repeated  the  same  things  ;  and  in  what  style  !  No 
idea  in  truth  can  be  formed  of  the  whole  scene,  unless 
by  those  present.  There  was  not  the  least  order  in  all 
he  stammered  out  (to  speak  sincerely)  with  the  most 
inconceivable  incoherence.  Bonaparte  was  no  orator. 
Perceiving  the  bad  effect  produced  upon  the  meeting 
by  this  rhapsody,  and  the  progressive  confusion  of  the 
speaker,  I  whispered  (pulling  his  coat  gently  at  the 
same  time)  —  *  Retire,  General ;  you  no  longer  know 
what  you  are  saying.'  I  made  a  sign  to  Berthier  to 
second  me  in  persuading  him  to  leave  the  place  ;  when 
suddenly,  after  stammering  out  a  few  words  more,  he 
turned  round,  saying,  '  Let  all  who  love  me  follow.'  " 
So  ended  this  famous  scene  — in  which,  more  than  in 
any  other  upon  record,  eloquence  and  presence  of  mind 
were  needful.  And  if  it  should  be  said  that  vagueness 
was  not  altogether  the  least  eligible  feature  in  a  speech 
;vhose  very  purpose  was  to  confuse,  and  to  leave  no 
room  for  answer,  we  reply — true;  but  then  it  was 
he  vagueness  of  art,  which  promised  to  be  serviceable, 
ind  that  of  preconcerted  perplexity,  not  the  vaguenesi 
>f  incoherence  and  a  rhapsody  of  utter  contradiction  * 

•  Some  people  may  fiuioy  that  this  scene  of  that  day's  drami 
Iras  got  up  merely  to  save  appearances  by  a  semblance  of  dit 
nuasion,  and  that  in  effect  it  mattered  not  how  the  performanot 


CHABLEMAONE.  157 

What  a  contrast  all  this  to  the  indefeasible  majesty 
»f  Charlemagne  ;  to  his  courage  and  presence  of  mind, 
which  always  rose  with  the  occasion  ;  and  above  all, 
to  his  promptitude  of  winning  eloquence,  that  promp. 
turn  ac  prqfluens  genus  sermonis,  which  caused  him  to 
be  accounted  cevi  sui  eloquentissimus  ! 

Passing  for  a  moment  to  minor  accomplishments,  we 
find  that  Charlemagne  excelled  in  athletic  and  gymnas- 
tic exercises  ;  he  was  a  pancratiast.  Bonaparte  wanted 
those  even  which  were  essential  to  his  own  daily  secu- 
rity. Charlemagne  swam  well ;  Bonaparte  not  at  all. 
Charlemagne  was  a  first-rate  horseman  even  amongst 
the  Franks ;  Napoleon  rode  ill  originally,  and  no 
practice  availed  to  give  him  a  firm  seat,  a  graceful 
equestrian  deportment,  or  a  skilful  bridle  hand.  In 
a  barbarous  age  the  one  possessed  all  the  elegancies 
and  ornamental  accomplishments  of  a  gentleman : 
the  other,  in  a  most  polished  age,  and  in  a  nation 
of  even  false  refinement,  was  the  sole  barbarian  of 
iiis  time  ;  presenting  in  his  deficiencies  the  picture 
of  a  low  mechanic,  and  in  his  positive  qualities  the 
violence  and  brutality   of  a  savage.*     Hence,  by  the 

was  conducted  where  all  was  scenical,  and  the  ultimate  reliance, 
after  all,  on  the  bayonet.  But  it  is  certain  that  this  view  is 
erroneous,  and  that  the  final  decision  of  the  soldiery,  even  up  to 
the  very  moment  of  the  crisis,  was  still  doubtful.  Some  time  af 
ter  this  exhibition,  "  the  hesitation  reigning  among  the  troops,'* 
Bays  Bourrienne,  "  still  continued."  And  in  reality  it  was  a 
mere  accident  of  pantomime,  and  a  clap-trap  of  sentiment,  which 
finally  gave  a  sudden  turn  in  Napoleon's  favor  to  their  wavering 
resolutions. 

*  We  have  occasionally  such  expressions  as  Dryden's  -s  "When 
vild  is  woods  fA<  noble  sara^c  ran."     These  descriptions  rest 


158  CHABI.KMAOKE. 

way,  the  extreme  folly  of  those  who  have  attempted 
to  trace  a  parallel  between  Napoleon  and  the  first 
Caesar.  The  hpaven-born  Julius,  as  beyond  all  .lisputo 
the  greatest  man  of  ancient  history  in  moral  grandeur, 
and  therefore  raised  unspeakably  above  comparison 
with  one  who  was  eminent,  even  amongst  ordinary 
men,  for  the  pettiness  of  his  passions,  so  also,  upon 
an  intellectual  trial,  will  be  found  to  challenge  pretty 
nearly  an  equal  precedency.  Meantime,  allowing  for 
the  inequality  of  their  advantages,  even  Caesar  would 
not  have  disdained  a  comparison  with  Charlemagne. 
All  the  knowledge  current  in  Rome,  Athens,  or 
Rhodes,  at  the  period  of  Caesar's  youth,  the  entire 
cycle  of  a  nobleman's  education  in  a  republic  where 
all  noblemen  were  from  their  birth  dedicated  to  public 
services,  this  —  together  with  much  and  various  knowl- 
edge peculiar  to  himself  and  his  own  separate  objects 
—  had  Caesar  mastered  ;  whilst  in  an  age  of  science, 
and  in  a  country  where  the  fundamental  science  of 
mathematics  was  generally  diffused  in  unrivalled  per- 
fection, it  is  well  ascertained  that  Bonaparte's  knowl- 
edge did  not  go  beyond  an  elementary  actjuaintance 
with  the  first  six  books  of  Euclid ;  but,  on  the  other 

upon  false  conceptions;  in  fact  no  such  combination  anywhere 
exists  as  a  man  having  the  training  of  a  savage,  or  occupying 
the  exposed  and  naked  situation  of  a  savage,  who  is  at  the  same 
time  in  any  moral  sense  at  liberty  to  be  noble-minded.  Men  are 
moulded  by  the  circumstances  in  which  thej  stand  habitually 
%nd  the  insecurity  of  savage  life,  by  makiug  it  impossible  to 
fcrego  any  sort  of  advantages,  obliterates  the  very  idea  of 
honor.  Hence,  with  all  savages  alike,  the  point  of  honor  lies  Id 
treachery,  in  stratagem,  and  the  utmost  excess  of  what  is  di» 
honorable,  according  to  the  estimate  of  cultivated  man. 


CHARLEMAGNE.  159 

hand,  Charlemagne,  even  in  that  earlj  age,  was  famil- 
ial- with  the  intricate  mathematics  and  the  elaborate 
computus  of  Practical  Astronomy. 

But  these  collations,  it  will  be  said,  are  upon  ques- 
tions not  primarily  affecting  their  peculiar  functions. 
They  are  questions  more  or  less  extrajudicial.  The 
true  point  of  comparison  is  upon  the  talents  of  policy 
in  the  first  place,  and  strategies  in  the  second.  A  trial 
between  two  celebrated  performers  in  these  depart- 
ments, is  at  any  rate  difficult;  and  much  more  so 
when  they  are  separated  by  vast  intervals  of  time.  Al- 
lowances must  be  made,  so  many  and  so  various  ;  com- 
pensations or  balances  struck  upon  so  many  diversities 
of  situation  ;  there  is  so  much  difference  in  the  modes 
of  warfare  —  offensive  and  defensive  ;  the  financial 
means,  the  available  alliances,  and  other  resources,  are 
with  so  much  difficulty  appraised  —  in  order  to  raise 
ourselves  to  that  station  from  which  the  whole  ques- 
tion can  be  overlooked,  that  nothing  short  of  a  general 
acquaintance  with  the  history,  statistics,  and  diplomacy 
of  the  two  periods,  can  lay  a  ground  for  the  solid  ad- 
judication of  so  large  a  comparison.  Meantime,  in  the 
absence  of  such  an  investigation,  pursued  upon  a  scale 
of  suitable  proportions,  what  if  we  should  sketch  a 
rapid  outline  {ag  ev  xvnc^  TtSQiXd^siv)  of  its  elements 
(to  speak  by  a  metaphor  borrowed  from  practical  as- 
tronomy) —  i.  c,  of  the  p-incipal  and  most  conspicuous 
points  which  its  path  would  traverse  ?  How  much 
.hese  two  men,  each  central  to  a  mighty  system  in  his 
Dwn  days,  how  largely  and  essentially  they  differed, 
whether  in  kind  or  in  degree  of  merit,  will  appear  in 
<he  course  even  of  the  hastiest  sketch.     The  circum* 


160  CHARLEMAGNE. 

Stances  in  which  they  agreed,  and  that  these  \vere  suf 
ficient  to  challenge  an  inquiry  into  their  characteristic 
differences,  and  to  support  the  interest  of  such  an  in- 
quiry, will  probably  be  familiar  to  most  readers,  as 
among  the  commonplaces  of  general  history  which 
survive  even  in  the  daily  records  of  conversation. 
Few  people. can  fail  to  know  —  that  each  of  these 
memorable  men  stood  at  the  head  of  a  new  era  in  Eu- 
ropean history,  and  of  a  great  movement  in  the  social 
development  of  nations  ;  that  each  laid  the  founda- 
tions for  a  new  dynasty  in  his  own  family,  the  one  by 
building  forwards  upon  a  basis  already  formed  by  his 
two  immediate  progenitors,  the  other  by  dexterously 
applying  to  a  great  political  crisis  his  own  military 
preponderance  ;  and,  finally,  that  each  forfeited  within 
a  very  brief  period  —  the  one  in  his  own  person,  the 
other  in  the  persons  of  his  immediate  descendants  — 
the  giddy  ascent  which  he  had  mastered,  and  all  the 
distinctions  which  it  conferred  ;  in  short,  that  "  Time, 
which  gave,  did  his  own  gifts  confound  ;  "  *  but  with 
this  mighty  difference  —  that  Time  co-operated  in  the 
one  case  with  extravagant  folly  in  the  individual,  and 
in  the  other  with  the  irresistible  decrees  of  Provi- 
dence. 

Bfapoleon  Bonaparte  and  Charlemagne  were  both, 
in  a  memorable  degree,  the  favorites  of  fortune.  It  is 
true,  that  the  latter  found  himself  by  inheritance  in 
possession  of  a  throne,  which  the  other  ascended  by 
he  fortunate  use  of  his  own  military  advantages.  Bui 
ine  throne  of  Charlemagne  had  been  recently  won  bj 
nis  family,  and  in  a  way  so  nearly  corresponding  U 

*  Shakspeare'a  Sonnets. 


CHARI-EMAGNE.  161 

that  which  was  afterwards  pursued  by  Napoleon,  that 
in  effect,  considering  how  little  this  usurpation  had 
been  hallowed  by  time,  the  throne  raigjht,  in  each  case, 
if  not  won  precisely  on  the  same  terms,  be  considered 
to  be  held  by  the  same  tenure.  Charlemagne,  not  less 
than  Napoleon,  was  the  privileged  child  of  revolution ; 
he  was  required  by  the  times,  and  indispensable  to  the 
crisis  which  had  arisen  for  the  Franks  ;  and  he  waa 
himself  protected  by  the  necessities  to  which  he  minis- 
tered. Clouds  had  risen,  or  were  rising,  at  that  era, 
on  every  quarter  of  France  ;  from  every  side  she  was 
menaced  by  hostile  demonstrations ;  and  without  the 
counsels  of  a  Charlemagne,  and  with  an  energy  of  ac- 
tion inferior  to  his,  it  is  probable  that  she  would  have 
experienced  misfortunes  which,  whilst  they  depressed 
herself,  could  not  but  have  altered  the  destinies  of 
Christendom  for  many  ages  to  come.  The  resources 
of  France,  it  is  true,  were  immense  ;  and,  as  regarded 
the  positions  of  her  enemies,  they  were  admirably  con- 
centrated. But  to  be  made  available  in  the  whole  ex- 
tent which  the  times  demanded,  it  was  essential  that 
hey  should  be  wielded  by  a  first-rate  statesman,  sup- 
,orted  by  a  first-rate  soldier.  The  statesman  and  the 
soldier  were  fortunately  found  united  in  the  person  of 
»ne  man  ;  and  that  man,  by  the  rarest  of  combinations, 
the  same  who  was  clothed  with  the  supreme  power  of 
the  state.  Less  power,  or  power  less  harmonious,  or 
power  the  most  consummate  administered  with  less  ab- 
solute skill,  would  aoubtless  have  been  found  incom- 
petent to  struggle  with  the  tempestuous  assaults  which 
ien  lowered  over  the  eatire  frontier  of  France.  It 
was  natural,  and,  uoon  the  known  constitution  of 
11 


162  CHAKLEMAOKE. 

human  nature,  pretty  nearly  inevitable,  that,  In  the 
course  of  the  very  extended  warfare  which  followed, 
love  for  that  glorious  trade  —  so  irritating  and  so  con- 
tagious —  should  be  largely  developed  in  a  mind  an 
aspiring  as  Charlemagne's,  and  stirred  by  such  gener- 
ous sensibilities.  Yet  is  it  in  no  one  instance  recorded, 
that  these  sympathies  with  the  pomp  and  circumstance 
of  war,  moved  him  to  undertake  so  much  as  a  single 
campaign,  or  an  expedition  which  was  not  otherwise 
demanded  by  his  judgment,  or  that  they  interfered 
even  to  bias  or  give  an  impulse  to  his  judgment,  where 
it  had  previously  wavered.  In  every  case  he  tried  the 
force  of  negotiation  before  he  appealed  to  arms ;  nay, 
sometimes  he  condescended  so  far  in  his  love  of  peace, 
as  to  attempt  purchasing  with  gold,  rights  or  conces- 
sions of  expediency,  which  he  knew  himself  in  a  situ- 
ation amply  to  extort  by  arms.  Nor,  where  these 
courses  were  unavailing,  and  where  peace  was  no 
longer  to  be  maintained  by  any  sacrifices,  is  it  ever 
found  that  Charlemagne,  in  adopting  the  course  of  war, 
Buffered  himself  to  pursue  it  as  an  end  valuable  in 
and  for  itself.  And  yet  that  is  a  result  not  uncom- 
mon ;  for  a  long  and  conscientious  resistance  to  a 
measure  originally  tempting  to  the  feelings,  once  being 
renounced  as  utterly  unavailing,  not  seldom  issues  in  a 
headlong  surrender  of  the  heart  to  purposes  so  vio- 
lently thwarted  for  a  time.  And  even  as  a  means,  war 
tvas  such  in  the  eyes  of  Charlemagne  to  something 
beyond  the  customary  ends  of  victory  and  domestic 
•ocurity.  Of  all  conquerors,  whose  history  is  known 
tufficiently  to  throw  light  upon  their  motives,  Charlcv 
jiagne  Is  the  only  one  who  looked  forward  to   th 


CHARLEMAGNE.  163 

benefit  of  those  he  conquered,  as  a  principal  element 
amongst  the  fruits  of  conquest.  "  Doubtless,"  says 
his  present  biographer,  "  to  defend  his  own  infringed 
territory,  and  to  punish  the  aggressors,  formad  a  part 
of  his  design  ;  but,  beyond  that,  he  aimed  at  civilizing 
a  people  whose  barbarism  had  been  for  centuries  the 
curse  of  the  neighboring  countries,  and  at  the  same 
time  communicating  to  the  cruel  savages,  who  shed 
the  blood  of  their  enemies  less  in  the  battle  than  in  the 
sacrifice,  the  bland  and  mitigating  spirit  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion." 

This  applies  more  particularly  and  circumstantially 
to  his  Saxon  campaigns  ;  but  the  spirit  of  the  remark 
is  of  general  application.  At  that  time  a  weak  light 
of  literature  was  beginning  to  difi'use  improvement  in 
Italy,  in  France,  and  in  England.  France,  by  situa- 
tion geographically,  and  politically  by  the  prodigious 
advantage  (which  she  exclusively  enjoyed)  of  an  un- 
divided government,  with  the  benefit  consequently  of 
an  entire  unity  in  her  counsels,  was  peculiarly  fitted 
for  communicating  the  blessings  of  intellectual  cujturp 
to  the  rest  of  the  European  continent,  and  for  sustain- 
ing the  great  mission  of  civilizing  conquest.  Above 
all,  as  the  great  central  depository  of  Christian  knowl- 
edge, she  seemed  specially  stationed  by  Providence  as 
a  martial  apostle  for  carrying  by  the  sword  that  mighty 
blessing,  which,  even  in  an  earthly  sense,  Charlemagne 
could  not  but  value  as  the  best  engine  of  civilization, 
to  the  potent  infidel  nations  on  her  southern  and  east- 
ern frontier.  A  vast  '•evolution  was  at  hand  for  Europe  ; 
ill  her  tribes  were  destined  to  be  fused  in  a  new  cru- 
»^ble,  to  be  recast  in    happier  moulds,  and  to  form 


164  CHABI.EHAONE. 

one  family  of  enlightened  nations,  to  compose  one 
great  collective  brotherhood,  united  by  the  tie  of  a 
common  faith  and  a  common  hope,  and  hereafter  to  be 
known  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  to  proclaim  tliis 
unity,  under  the  comprehensive  name  of  Christendom. 
Baptism,  therefore,  was  the  indispensable  condition 
und  forerunner  of  civilization ;  and  from  the  peculiar 
ferocity  and  the  sanguinary  superstitions  which  dis- 
figured the  Pagan  nations  in  Central  Europe,  of  which 
the  leaders  and  the  nearest  to  France  were  the  Saxons, 
and  from  the  bigotry  and  arrogant  intolerance  of  the 
Mohammedan  nations  who  menaced  her  Spanish  fron 
tier,  it  was  evident  that  by  the  sword  only  it  was  pos 
Bible  that  baptism  should  be  effectually  propagated 
War,  therefore,  for  the  highest  purposes  of  peace 
became  the  present  and  instant  policy  of  France 
bloodshed  for  the  sake  of  a  religion  the  most  benign  ; 
and  desolation  with  a  view  to  permanent  security.  The 
Frankish  emperor  was  thus  invited  to  indulge  in  this 
most  captivating  of  luxuries  —  the  royal  tiger-hunt  of 
war ;  as  being  also  at  this  time,  and  for  a  special 
purpose,  the  sternest  of  duties.  He  had  a  special  dis- 
pensation for  wielding  at  times  a  barbarian  and  exter- 
minating sword,  but  for  the  extermination  of  barbarism  ; 
and  he  was  privileged  to  be  in  a  single  instance  an 
Attila,  in  order  that  Attilas  might  no  more  arise. 
Simply  as  the  enemies,  bitter  and  perfidious  of  France, 
the  Saxons  were  a  legitimate  object  of  war ;  as  tho 
standing  enemies  of  civilization,  who  would  neither 
receive  it  for  themselves,  nor  tolerate  its  peaceable 
enjoyment  in  others,  they  and  Charlemagne  stood  op. 
posed  to  each  other  as  it  were  by  hostile  instincta.    Ann 


CHARLEMAOXE.  165 

Ibis  most  merciful  of  conquerors  was  fully  justified  in 
departing  for  once,  and  in  such  a  quarrel,  from  hia 
general  rule  of  conduct ;  and  for  a  paramount  purpose 
of  comprehensive  service  to  all  mankind,  we  entirely 
agree  with  Mr.  James,  that  Charlemagne  had  a  suffi- 
cient plea,  and  that  he  has  been  censured  only  by  ca- 
lumnious libellers,  or  by  the  feeble-minded,  for  applying 
a  Roman  severity  of  punishment  to  treachery  continu- 
ally repeated.  The  question  is  one  purely  of  policy  ; 
and  it  may  be,  as  Mr.  James  is  disposed  to  think,  that 
in  point  of  judgment  the  emperor  erred  ;  but  certainly 
the  case  was  one  of  great  difficulty  ;  for  the  very  in- 
firmity even  of  maternal  indulgence,  if  obstinately  and 
continually  abused,  must  find  its  ultimate  limit ;  and 
we  have  no  right  to  suppose  that  Charlemagne  made 
his  election  for  the  harsher  course  without  a  violent 
self-conflict.  His  former  conduct  towards  those  very 
people,  his  infinite  forbearance,  his  long-suffering,  his 
monitory  threats,  all  make  it  a  duty  to  presume  that 
he  suffered  the  acutest  pangs  in  deciding  upon  a  vin- 
dictive punishment ;  that  he  adopted  this  course  as 
being  virtually  by  its  consequences  the  least  sanguinary  ; 
and,  finally,  that  if  he  erred,  it  was  not  through  hi» 
heart,  but  by  resisting  its  very  strongest  impulses. 

It  is  remarkable  that  both  Charlemagne  and  Bona, 
parte  succeeded  as  by  inheritance  to  one  great  element 
of  their  enormous  power;  each  found,  ready  to  his 
hands,  that  vast  development  of  martial  enthusiasm, 
apon  which,  as  its  first  condition,  their  victorious 
careei  reposed.  Each  also  found  the  great  armory  of 
resources  opened,  which  ?-ich  a  spirit,  diff^used  over  so 
►ast  a  territory,  must  in  aay  age  insure.     Of  Charle- 


( 
V 


166  CHARLEMAGNE. 

magne,  in  an  age  when  as  yet  the  use  of  infantry  was 
but  imperfectly  known,  it  may  be  said  symbolically, 
that  he  found  the  universal  people,  patrician  and  ple- 
beian, chieftain  and  vassal,  with  the  left  foot  *  in  the 
stirrup  ;  of  Napoleon,  in  an  age  when  the  use  of  artil- 
lery was  first  understood,  that  he  found  every  man 
standing  to  his  gun.  Both  in  short  found  war  in 
procinctu  ;  both  found  the  people  whom  they  governed, 
willing  to  support  the  privations  and  sacrifices  which 
war  imposes  ;  hungering  and  thirsting  for  its  glories, 
its  pomps  and  triumphs;  entering  even  with  lively 
sympathy  of  pleasure  into  its  hardships  and  its  trials ; 
and  thus,  from  within  and  from  without,  prepared  for 
military  purposes.  So  far  both  had  the  same  good 
fortune ;  f  neither  had  much  merit.     The  enthusiasm 

•  Or  perhaps  the  right,  for  the  Prussian  cavalry  (who  drew 
their  custom  from  some  regiments  in  the  service  of  Qustavus 
Adolphus,  and  they  again  traditionally  from  others)  are  always 
trained  to  mount  in  this  way. 

t  It  is  painful  to  any  man  of  honorable  feeling  that,  whilst 
a  great  rival  nation  is  pursuing  the  ennobling  profession  of  arms, 
his  own  should  be  reproached  contemptuously  with  a  sordid 
dedication  to  commerce.  However,  on  the  one  hand,  things  are 
not  always  as  they  seem;  commerce  has  its  ennobling  effects, 
direct  or  indirect,  war  its  barbarizing  degradations.  And,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  facts  even  are  not  exactly  as  prima  facie 
they  were  supposed;  for  the  truth  is,  that,  in  proportion  to  its 
total  population,  England  had  more  men  in  arms  during  tha 
.ast  war  than  France.  But,  generally  speaking,  the  case  may 
be  stated  thus  :  the  British  nation  is,  by  original  constitution  of 
mind,  and  by  long  enjoyment  of  libarty,  a  far  nobler  people  than 
the  French.  And  hence  we  see  the  reason  and  the  necessity  that 
ihe  French  should,  with  a  view  to  something  like  a  final  balanof 
«i  the  effect,  be  trained  to  a  nobler  profession.     Compeusationf 


CHARLEMAONE.  167 

»f  Napoleon's  days  was  the  birth  of  republican  sen- 
timents, and  built  on  a  reaction  of  civic  and  patiiotic 
ardor.  In  the  very  plenitude  of  their  rage  against 
kings,  the  French  Republic  were  threatened  with  at- 
tack, and  with  the  desolation  of  their  capital  by  a 
banded  crusade  of  kings ;  and  they  rose  in  frenzy  to 
meet  the  aggressors.  The  Allied  Powers  had  them- 
selves kindled  the  popular  excitement  which  provoked 
this  vast  development  of  martial  power  amongst  the 
French,  and  first  brought  their  own  warlike  strength 
within  their  own  knowledge.  In  the  days  of  Charle- 
magne the  same  martial  character  was  the  result  of 
ancient  habits  and  training,  encouraged  and  effectually 
organized  by  the  energy  of  the  aspiring  mayors  of  the 
palace,  or  great  lieutenants  of  the  Merovingian  kings. 
But  agreeing  in  this,  that  they  were  indebted  to  others 
for  the  martial  spirit  which  they  found,  and  that  both 
turned  to  their  account  a  power  not  created  by  them- 
selves ;  Charlemagne  and  Napoleon  differed,  however 
in  the  utmost  possible  extent  as  to  the  final  application 
of  their  borrowed  advantages.  Napoleon  applied  them 
to  purposes  the  very  opposite  of  those  which  had 
originally  given  them  birth.  Nothing  less  than  patri- 
otic ardor  in  defence  of  what  had  at  one  time  appeared 
to  be  the  cause  of  civil  liberty,  could  have  availed  to 
evoke  those  mighty  hosts  which  gathered  in  the  early 
years  of  the  Revolution  on  the  German  and  Italian 
frontiers  of  France.  Yet  were  these  hosts  applied, 
under  the  perfect  despotism  of  Napoleon,  to  the  final 

ftre  everywhere  produced  or  encouraged  by  nature  and  by  Provi- 
llenco,  and  a  nobler  diacipline  in  the  one  nation  is  doubtlcM 
lone  equilibrium  to  a  nobler  nature  in  tbt)  other 


168  CHARLEMAGNE. 

extinction  of  liberty;  and  the  armies  of  Jacobiziism, 
vho  had  gone  forth  on  a  mission  of  liberation  for 
Europe,  were  at  last  employed  in  riveting  the  chains 
of  their  compatriots,  and  forging  others  for  the  greater 
,)?rt  of  Christendom.  Far  otherwise  was  the  conduct 
)f  Charlemagne.  The  Frankish  government,  though 
^6  are  not  circumstantially  acquainted  with  its  fonni, 
is  known  to  have  been  tempered  by  a  large  infusion 
of  popular  influence.  This  is  proved,  as  Mr.  James 
observes,  by  the  deposition  cf  Chilperic ;  by  the  grand 
national  assemblies  of  the  Champ  de  Mars  ;  and  by 
other  great  historical  facts.  Now,  the  situation  of 
Charlemagne,  successor  to  a  throne  already  firmly  es- 
tablished, and  in  his  own  person  a  mighty  amplifier  of 
its  glories,  and  a  leader  in  whom  the  Franks  had  un- 
limited confidence,  threw  into  his  hands  an  unexam- 
pled power  of  modifying  the  popular  restraints  upon 
himself  in  any  degree  he  might  desire. 

«•  Nunqaam  libertaa  gratior  exit, 
Quam  sub  rege  pio  "  — 

is  the  general  doctrine.  But  as  to  the  Franks  in  par- 
ticular, if  they  resembled  their  modem  representatives 
^n  their  most  conspicuous  moral  feature,  it  would  be 
more  true  to  say,  that  the  bribe  and  the  almost  magical 
seduction  for  them,  capable  of  charming  away  their 
sternest  resolutions,  and  of  relaxing  the  hand  of  the 
patriot  when  grasping  his  noblest  birthright,  has  ever 
lain  in  great  military  success,  in  the  power  of  bringing 
victory  to  the  national  standards,  and  in  continued 
offerings  on  the  altar  of  public  vanity.  In  timr  esti- 
mate for  above  a  thousand  years,  it  has  been  foun< 
;rue  that  the  harvest  of   a  few  splendid  campaigns. 


CHABLEMAONE.  16$ 

rebped  upon  the  fields  of  neighboring  nations,  far  jut- 
weighs  any  amount  of  humbler  blessings  in  the  shape 
of  civil  and  political  privileges.  Chariemagne  as  a 
"yoiR^jyi-T,-  and  by  far  the  greatest  illustrator  of  the 
Frankish  name,  might  easily  have  conciliated  their 
gratitude  and  admiration  into  a  surrender  of  popular 
rights  ;  or,  profiting  by  his  high  situation,  and  the 
confidence  reposed  in  him,  he  might  have  undermined 
their  props  ;  or,  by  a  direct  exertion  of  his  power,  he 
niight  hav^  peremptorily  resumed  them.  Slowly  and 
unrely,  or  summarily  and  with  violence,  this  great  em- 
peror had  the  national  privileges  in  his  power.  But 
the  beneficence  of  his  purposes  required  no  such 
aggression  on  the  rights  of  his  subjects.  War  brought 
with  it  naturally  some  extension  of  power ;  and  a 
military  jurisdiction  is  necessarily  armed  with  some 
discretionary  license.  But  in  the  civil  exercise  of  his 
authority,  the  emperor  was  content  with  the  powers 
awarded  to  him  by  law  and  custom.  His  great  schemes 
of  policy  were  all  of  a  nature  to  prepare  his  subjects 
for  a  condition  of  larger  political  influence  ;  he  could 
not  in  consistency  be  adverse  to  an  end  towards  which 
ae  so  anxiously  prepared  the  means.     And  it  is  certain 

hat,  although  some  Germati  writers  have  attempted  to 
t.«sten  upon  Charlemagne  a  charge  of  vexatious  inqui- 
sition into  the  minor  police  of  domestic  life,  and  into 
letty  details  of  economy  below  the  majesty  of  his  offi- 
cial character,  even  their  vigilance  of  research,  sharp- 
ened by  malice,  bas  Leen  unable  to  detect  throughout 

.is  long  reign,  and  in  the  hurry  of  sudden  exigenciea 
natural  to  a  state  of  uniD*errupted  warfare  and  alarm, 
»ne  single  act  of  *,yranny,  personal  revenge,  or  viola- 

\ 


l72  CHABLEMAOXB. 

of  the  transaction  can  affect  its  principle,  but  i ,  is  well 
to  know  it,  because  then  to  its  author,  as  new  to  us 
ivho  sit  as  judges  upon  it,  that  circumstance  cannot  be 
supposed  to  have  failed  in  drawing  the  very  keenest 
attention  to  its  previous  consideration.  A  butchery, 
that  was  in  a  numerical  sense  so  vast,  cannot  be  sup- 
posed to  have  escaped  its  author  in  a  hurry,  or  to  be 
open  to  any  of  the  usual  palliations  from  precipitance 
or  inattention.  Charlemagne  and  Napoleon  must 
equally  be  presumed  to  have  regarded  this  act  on  all 
sides,  to  have  weighed  it  in  and  for  itself,  and  to  have 
traversed  by  anticipation  the  whole  sum  of  its  conse- 
quences. In  the  one  case  we  find  a  general,  the  leader 
of  a  soi-disant  Christian  army,  the  representative  of  the 
"  most  Christian "  nation,  and,  as  amongst  infidels, 
specially  charged  with  the  duty  of  supporting  the  sanc- 
tity of  Christian  good  faith,  unfortunately  pledged  by 
his  own  most  confidential  and  accredited  agents,  in  a 
moment  of  weakness,  to  a  promise  which  he  the  com- 
mander-in-chief regarded  as  ruinous.  This  promise, 
fatal  to  Napoleon's  honor,  and  tarnishing  for  many  a 
year  to  the  Christian  name,  guaranteed  "quarter"  to 
a  large  body  of  Turkish  troops,  having  arms  in  their 
hands,  and  otherwise  well  able  to  have  made  a  despe- 
i-ate  defence.  Such  a  promise  was  peculiarly  embar- 
rassing ;  provisions  ran  short!  and,  to  detain  them  as 
orisoners,  would  draw  murmurs  from  his  own  troops,  y 
now  suffering  hardships  themselves.  On  the  other 
band,  to  have  turned  them  adrift  would  have  insured 
their  speedy  reappearance  as  active  enemies  to  a  di- 
minished and  debilitated  army  ;  for,  as  to  sending  thenr  "* 
«ff  by  sea,  that  measure  was  impracticable,  as  wel 


( 


CHAKLEMAGNB.  178 

from  want  of  shipping  as  from  the  presence  of  the 
English.  Such  was  the  dilemma,  doubtless  perplexing 
enough,  but  not  more  so  than  in  ten  thousand  other 
cases,  for  which  their  own  appropriate  ten  thousand 
remedies  have  been  found.  What  was  the  issue? 
The  entire  body  of  gallant  soldiers,  disarmed  upon  the 
faith  of  a  solemn  guarantee  from  a  Christian  general, 
standing  in  the  very  steps  of  the  noble  (and  the  more 
noble,  because  bigoted)  Crusaders,  were  all  mowed 
down  by  the  musketry  of  their  thrice  accursed  enemy ; 
and,  by  way  of  crowning  treachery  with  treachery, 
some  few  who  had  swum  off  to  a  point  of  rock  in  the 
sea,  were  lured  back  to  destruction  under  a  second 
series  of  promises,  violated  almost  at  the  very  instant 
when  uttered.  A  larger  or  more  damnable  murder 
does  not  stain  the  memory  of  any  brigand,  bucca- 
neer, or  pirate ;  nor  has  any  army,  Huns,  Vandals, 
or  Mogul  Tartars,  ever  polluted  itself  by  so  base 
a  perfidy ;  for,  in  this  memorable  tragedy,  the  whole 
army  were  accomplices.  Now,  as  to  Charlemagne,  he 
had  tried  the  efiect  of  forgiveness  and  lenity  often  in 
vain.  Clemency  was  misinterpreted ;  it  had  been,  and 
it  would  be,  construed  into  conscious  weakness.  Un- 
der these  circumstances,  with  a  view  undoubtedly  to 
Ae  final  extinction  of  rebellions  which  involved  infi- 
nite bloodshed  on  both  sides,  he  permitted  one  trial 
to  be  made  of  a  severe  and  sanguinary  chastisement. 
It  failed  ;  insurrections  proceeded  as  before,  and  it  was 
not  repeated.  But  the  main  difierence  in  the  principle 
of  the  two  cases  is  this,  that  Charlemagne  had  exacted 
10  penalty  but  one,  which  the  laws  of  war  in  that  age 
lonferred,  and  even  in  this  age  tne  laws  of  aDegiance. 


l74  CHA.RLEMAOXE. 

However  bloody,  therefore,  this  tragedy  was  no  murdei, 
It  was  a  judicial  punishment,  built  upon  known  acta 
and  admitted  laws,  designed  in  mercy,  consented  to 
unwillingly,  and  finally  repented.  Lastly,  instead  of 
being  one  in  a  multitude  of  acts  bearing  the  same 
character,  it  stood  alone  in  a  long  career  of  intercourse 
with  wild  and  ferocious  nations,  owning  no  control 
but  that  of  the  spear  and  sword. 

Many  are  the  points  of  comparison,  and  some  of 
them  remarkable  enough,  in  the  other  circumstances  of 
the  two  careers,  separated  by  a  thousand  years.  Both 
effected  the  passage  of  the  Great  St.  Bernard  ;  *  but 
the  one  in  an  age  when  mechanical  forces,  and  the  aids 
of  art,  were  yet  imperfectly  developed  ;  the  other  in  an 
age  when  science  had  armed  the  arts  of  war  and  of 
locomotion  with  the  fabulous  powers  of  the  Titans, 
and  with  the  whole  resources  of  a  mighty  nation  at  his 
immediate  disposal.  Both,  by  means  of  this  extraor- 
dinary feat,  achieved  the  virtual  conquest  of  Lombardy 
in  an  hour ;  but  Charlemagne,  without  once  risking 
the  original  impression  of  this  coup-cTeclat ;  Napoleon, 
on  the  other  hand,  so  entirely  squandering  and  for- 
'eiting  his  own  success,  that  in  the  battle  which  fol- 
lowed he  was  at  first  utterly  defeated,  and  but  for  the 
blunder  of  his  enemy,  and  the  sudden  aid  of  an  accom- 
plished friend,  irretrievably.  Both  suffered  politically 
by  the  repudiation  of  a  wife  ;  but  Charlemagne,  under 

*  And  from  the  fact  of  that  corps  in  Charlemagne's  army, 
which  effected  the  passage,  having  been  commanded  by  his  uncle 
Duke  Bernard,  this  mountain,  previously  known  as  the  Mon$ 
Jovis  (and,  by  corruption,  Mont  le  Joux),  very  justly  obtained 
the  ncore  irodem  name  which  it  still  retains. 


CHARLKMAONE.  175 

idequaie  provocation,  and  wita  no  final  result  of  evil ; 
Bonaparte  ur  icr  heavy  aggravations  of  ingratitude  and 
indiscretion.  Each  assumed  the  character  of  a  patron 
to  learning  and  learned  men  ;  but  Napoleon,  in  an 
age  when  knowledge  of  every  kind  was  self-patronized, 
when  no  possible  exertions  of  power  could  avail  to 
crush  it,  and  yet,  under  these  circumstances,  with  utte? 
insincerity.  Charlemagne,  on  the  other  hand,  at  a 
time  when  the  countenance  of  a  powerful  protector 
made  the  whole  difference  between  revival  and  a  long 
extinction  ;  and  what  was  still  more  to  the  purpose  of 
doing  honor  to  his  memory,  not  merely  in  a  spirit  oi' 
sincerity,  but  of  fervid  activity.  Not  content  with 
drawing  counsel  and  aid  from  the  cells  of  Northumber- 
land, even  the  short  time  which  he  passed  at  Rome,  he 
had  "  collected  a  number  of  grammarians  (that  is, 
litterateurs)  and  arithmeticians,  the  poor  remains  of 
the  orators  and  philosophers  of  the  past,  and  engaged 
them  to  accompany  him  from  Italy  to  France." 

What  resulted  in  each  case  from  these  great  efforts 
and  prodigious  successes  ?  Each  failed  in  laying  the 
foundations  of  any  permanent  inheritance  to  his  own 
glory  in  his  own  family.  But  Bonaparte  lived  to  lay 
^n  ruins  even  his  personal  interest  in  this  great  edifice 
if  empire  ;  and  that  entirely  by  his  own  desperate  pre- 
sumption, precipitance,  and  absolute  defect  of  self- 
command.  Charlemagne,  on  his  part,  lost  nothing  of 
what  he  had  gained :  if  his  posterity  did  not  long 
maintain  the  elevation  to  which  he  had  raised  them, 
that  did  but  the  more  proclaim  the  grandeur  of  the 
mind  which  had  reared  &  colossal  empire,  that  sank 
inder  any  powers  inferior  to  his  own.     If  the  empire 


(76  CHARLEMAGNE. 

tself  lost  its  unity,  and  divided  into  sections,  even  thui 
it  did  not  lose  the  splendor  and  prosperit)'  of  its  sepa- 
rate parts  ;  and  the  praise  remains  entire  —  let  suc- 
ceeding princes,  as  conservators,  have  failed  as  much 
and  as  excusably  as  they  might  —  that  he  erected  the 
following  splendid  empire  :  —  The  whole  of  France 
and  Belgium,  with  their  natural  boundaries  of  the 
AJps,  the  Pyrenees,  the  Ocean,  the  Mediterranean  ;  to 
the  south,  Spain  between  the  Ebro  and  the  Pyrenees ; 
und  to  the  north,  the  whole  of  Germany,  up  to  the 
banks  of  the  Elbe  Italy,  as  far  as  the  lower  Calabria, 
was  either  governed  by  his  son,  or  tributary  to  his 
crown ;  Dalmatia,  Croatia,  Liburnia,  and  Istria  (with 
the  exception  of  the  maritime  cities),  were  joined  to 
the  territories,  which  he  had  himself  conquered,  of 
Hungary  and  Bohemia.  As  far  as  the  conflux  of  the 
Danube  with  the  Teyss  and  the  Save,  the  east  of  Eu- 
rope acknowledged  his  power.  Most  of  the  Sclavonian 
tribes,  between  the  Elbe  and  the  Vistula,  paid  tribute 
and  professed  obedience  ;  and  Corsica,  Sardinia,  with 
the  Balearic  Islands,  were  dependent  upon  his  posses- 
sions in  Italy  and  Spain. 

His  moral  were  yet  greater  than  his  territorial  con- 
quests :  in  the  eloquent  language  of  his  present  histc  • 
»ian,  "he  snatched  from  darkness  all  the  lands  ho 
conquered ;  and  may  be  said  to  have  added  the  whole 
of  Germany  to  the  world."  Wherever  he  moved, 
civilization  followed  his  footsteps.  What  he  conquered 
was  emphatically  the  conquest  of  his  own  genius ;  and 
ills  vast  empire  was,  in  a  peculiar  sense,  his  own  crea* 
don.  And  that  which,  under  general  circumstances 
vould  havo  exposed  the  hollo\viie88  and  insufficiency 


CHARLEMAGNE.  177 

of  his  establishment,  was  for  him,  in  particular,  the 
seal  and  attestation  of  his  extraordinary  grandeur  of 
mind.  His  empire  dissolved  after  he  had  departed  ; 
his  dominions  lost  their  cohesion,  and  slipped  away 
from  the  nerveless  hands  which  succeeded  ;  a  sufficient 
evidence  —  were  there  no  other  —  that  all  the  vast 
resources  of  the  Prankish  throne,  wielded  by  imbecile 
minds,  were  inadequate  to  maintain  that  which,  in  the 
hands  of  a  Charlemagne,  they  had  availed  Ui  conquei 
tnd  cement. 


JOAN   OF   ARC.'' 

m    REFERENCE   TO   M.    MICHELET'S    HISTORY    OF 
FRANCE. 

What  ia  to  be  thought  of  her  ?  What  is  to  be 
thought  of  the  poor  shepherd  girl  from  the  hills  and 
forests  of  Lorraine,  that  —  like  the  Hebrew  shepherd 
boy  from  the  hills  and  forests  of  Judaea  —  rose  sud- 
denly out  of  the  quiet,  out  of  the  safety,  out  of  the  re- 
ligious inspiration,  footed  in  deep  pastoral  solitudes,  to 
a  station  in  the  van  of  armies,  and  to  the  more  perilous 
station  at  the  right  hand  of  kings  ?  The  Hebrew  boy 
inaugurated  his  patriotic  mission  by  an  act,  by  a  victo- 
rious act^  such  as  no  man  could  deny.  But  so  did  the 
gfirl  of  Lorraine,  if  we  read  her  story  as  it  was  read  by 
those  who  saw  her  nearest.  Adverse  armies  bore  wit- 
ness to  the  boy  as  no  pretender ;  but  so  they  did  to 
the  gentle  girl.  Judged  by  the  voices  of  all  who  saw 
them  from  a  station  of  good-will^  both  were  found  true 
and  loyal  to  any  promises  involved  in  their  first  acts. 
Enemies  it  was  that  made  the  difi"erence  between  their 
subsequent  fortunes.  The  boy  rose  to  a  splendor  and 
X  noonday  prosperity,  both  personal  and  public,  that 
rang  through  the  records  of  his  people,  and  became  a 
by-word  amongst  his  posterity  for  a  thousand  years, 
antU  the  sceptre  was  departing  from  Judah.  The  poor 
"orsaken  girl,  on  the  contrary,  drank  not  herself  froit 
-hat  cup  of  rest  which  she  had  secured  for  France. 
Bhe  never  sang  together  with  the  songs  that  rose  in  het 


JOAN    OP    ARC.  179 

native  Domremy,  as  echoes  to  the  departing  steps  oi 
invaders.  She  mingled  not  in  the  festal  dances  at 
Vaucouleurs  which  celebrated  in  rapture  the  redemp- 
tion of  France.  No  !  for  her  voice  was  then  silent : 
no !  for  her  feet  were  dust.  Pure,  innocent,  noble- 
hearted  girl !  whom,  from  earliest  youth,  ever  I  be- 
lieved in  as  full  of  truth  and  self-sacrifice,  this  waa 
amongst  the  strongest  pledges  for  thy  truth,  that  nevei 
once  —  no,  not  for  a  moment  of  weakness  —  didst  thou 
revel  in  the  vision  of  coronets  and  honor  from  man. 
Coronets  for  thee  !  O  no  !  Honors,  if  they  come  when 
all  is  over,  are  for  those  that  share  thy  blood.®  Daugh- 
ter of  Domremy,  when  the  gratitude  of  thy  king  shall 
awaken,  thou  wilt  be  sleeping  the  sleep  of  the  dead. 
Call  her.  King  of  France,  but  she  will  not  hear  thee  ! 
Cite  her  by  thy  apparitors  to  come  and  receive  a  rob<) 
of  honor,  but  she  will  be  found  en  contumace.  When 
the  thunders  of  universal  France,  as  even  yet  may  hap- 
pen, shall  proclaim  the  grandeur  of  the  poor  shepherd 
girl  that  gave  up  all  for  her  country,  thy  ear,  young 
shepherd  girl,  will  have  been  deaf  for  five  centurieg. 
To  suffer  and  to  do,  that  was  thy  portion  in  this  life ; 
that  was  thy  destiny  ;  and  not  for  a  moment  was  it 
hidden  from  thyself.  Life,  thou  saidst,  is  short :  and 
the  sleep  which  is  in  the  grave  is  long  !  Let  me  use 
that  life,  so  transitory,  for  the  glory  of  those  heavenly 
dreams  destined  to  comfort  the  sleep  which  is  so  long. 
This  pure  creature  —  pure  from  every  suspicion  of 
even  a  visionary  self-interest,  even  as  she  was  pure  in 
senses  more  obvious  —  never  once  did  this  holy  child, 
M  regarded  herself,  relax  from  her  belief  in  the  dark- 
less that  was  travelling  to  meet  her.  She  might  not 
prefigure  the  very  manner  of  her  death  ;  she  saw  not 


180  JOAN    OF    ARC. 

n  vision,  perhaps,  the  aerial  altitude  of  the  fiery  scaf* 
fold,  the  spectators  without  end  on  every  road  pouring 
into  Rouen  as  to  a  coronation,  the  surging  smoke,  the 
volleying  flames,  the  hostile  faces  all  around,  the  pity- 
ing eye  that  lurked  but  here  and  there,  until  nature 
and  imperishable  truth  broke  loose  from  artificial 
restraints  ;  —  these  might  not  be  apparent  through  the 
mists  of  the  hurrying  future.  But  the  vioice  that 
called  her  to  death,  that  she  heard  for  ever. 

Great  was  the  throne  of  France  even  in  those  days, 
and  great  was  he  that  sat  upon  it :  but  well  Joanna 
knew  that  not  the  throne,  nor  he  that  sat  upon  it,  waa 
for  her ;  but,  on  the  contrai-y,  that  she  was  for  them ; 
not  she  by  them,  but  they  by  her,  should  rise  from  the 
dust.  Gorgeous  were  the  lilies  of  France,  and  for  cen- 
turies had  the  privilege  to  spread  their  beauty  over 
land  and  sea,  untU,  in  another  century,  the  wrath  of 
God  and  man  combined  to  wither  them  ;  but  well 
Joanna  knew,  eai'ly  at  Domremy  she  had  read  that 
bitter  truth,  that  the  lilies  of  France  would  decorate 
no  garland  for  her.  Flower  nor  bud,  bell  nor  blossom, 
would  ever  bloom  for  her. 

But  stay.  What  reason  is  there  for  taking  up  thii 
subject  of  Joanna  precisely  in  the  spring  of  1847? 
Might  it  not  have  been  left  till  the  spring  of  1947  ;  or, 
perhaps,  left  till  called  for  ?  Yes,  but  it  is  called  for  ; 
Mid  clamorously.  You  are  aware,  reader,  that  amongst 
the  many  original  thinkers  whom  modem  France  has 
Droduced,  one  of  the  reputed  leaders  is  M.  MicheleL 
AU  these  writers  are  of  a  revolutionary  cast ;  not  in  a 
political  sense  merely,  but  in  all  senses  ;  mad,  often> 
times,  as  March  hares  ;  crazy  with  the  laughing  gas  of 


JOAN    OF    ARC.  181 

recovered  liberty ;  drunk  with  the  wine-cup  oi  theii 
naighty  revolution,  snorting,  whinnying,  throwing  up 
their  heels,  like  wild  horses  in  the  boundless  Pampas, 
kad  running  races  of  defiance  with  snipes,  or  with  the 
winds,  or  with  their  own  shadows,  if  they  can  find 
Eothing  else  to  challenge.  Some  time  or  other  I,  tha* 
b»»ve  leisure  to  read,  may  introduce  you,  that  have  not, 
l->  ,ao  or  three  dozen  of  these  writers ;  of  whom  I  can 
assure  you  beforehand,  that  they  are  often  profound, 
and  at  intervals  are  even  as  impassioned  as  if  they 
Avere  come  of  our  best  English  blood.  But  now,  con- 
fining our  attention  to  M.  Michelet,  we  in  England  — 
who  know  him  best  by  his  worst  book,  the  book 
against  priests,  &c.  —  know  him  disadvantageously. 
That  book  is  a  rhapsody  of  incoherence.  But  hia 
'  History  of  France '  is  quite  another  thing.  A 
man,  in  whatsoever  craft  he  sails,  cannot  stretch 
away  out  of  sight  when  he  is  linked  to  the  windings 
of  the  shore  by  towing  ropes  of  history.  Facts,  and 
the  consequences  of  facts,  draw  the  -writer  back  to  the 
falconer's  lure  from  the  giddiest  heights  of  speculation. 
Here,  therefore  —  in  his  '  France  '  —  if  not  always  free 
from  flightiness,  if  now  and  then  ofi"  like  a  rocket  for 
an  airy  wheel  in  the  clouds,  M.  Michelet,  with  natxiral 
politeness,  never  forgets  that  he  has  left  a  large  audi- 
ence waiting  for  him  on  eai'th,  and  gazing  upwards  in 
anxiety  for  his  return :  return,  therefore,  he  does. 
But  history,  though  clear  of  certain  temptations  in  one 
iirection,  has  separate  dangers  of  its  own.  It  is  im- 
possible so  to  write  a  historv  of  France,  or  of  England 
—  works  becoming  every  hour  more  indispensable  to 
the  inevitably-political  man  of  this  day  —  without  per- 
ious  openings  for  error.     If  I,  for  instance,  on  the  paif 


182  JOAN    OF    ABC. 

of  England,  should  happen  to  turn  my  labors  in  that 
channel,  and  (on  the  model  of  Lord  Percy  going  to 
Chery  Chase) 

'  A  Yow  to  Ood  should  make 
My  pleasure  in  the  Michelet  woods 
Three  summer  days  to  take,' 

probably,  from  simple  delirium,  I  might  hunt  M. 
Michelet  into  delirium  tremens.  Two  strong  angels 
stand  by  the  side  of  history,  whether  French  history  or 
English,  as  heraldic  supporters :  the  angel  of  research 
on  the  left  hand,  that  must  read  millions  of  dusty 
parchments,  and  of  pages  blotted  with  lies  ;  the  angel 
of  meditation  on  the  right  hand,  that  must  cleanse  these 
lying  records  with  fire,  even  as  of  old  the  draperies  of 
asbestos  were  cleansed,  and  must  quicken  them  into 
regenerated  life.  Willingly  I  acknowledge  that  no 
man  will  ever  avoid  innumerable  errors  of  detail ;  with 
BO  vast  a  compass  of  ground  to  traverse,  this  is  impos- 
sible ;  but  such  errors  (though  I  have  a  bushel  on 
hand,  at  M.  Michelet's  service)  are  not  the  game  I 
chase ;  it  is  the  bitter  and  unfair  spirit  in  which  M. 
Michelet  writes  against  England.  Even  that,  after  all 
is  but  my  secondary  object ;  the  real  one  is  Joanna, 
the  Pucelle  d' Orleans  for  herself. 

I  am  not  going  to  write  the  History  of  La  Pucelle  : 
to  do  this,  or  even  circumstantially  to  report  the  his- 
tory of  her  persecution  and  bitter  death,  of  her  strug- 
gle with  false  witnesses  and  with  ensnaring  judges,  it 
would  be  necessary  to  have  before  us  all  the  docu- 
ments, and  therefore  the  collection  only*"  now  forth- 
coming in  Paris.  But  my  purpose  is  narrower.  There 
have  been  great  thinkers,  disdaining  the  careless  judg 
»«■- 1»  nf  contemporaries,  who  have  thrown  themselvei 


JOAN    OF    ARC  183 

boldly  on  the  judgment  of  a  far  posterity,  that  should 
have  had  time  to  review,  to  ponder,  to  compare.  There 
have  been  great  actors  on  the  stage  of  tragic  humanity 
that  might  with  the  same  depth  of  confidence,  have 
appealed  from  the  levity  of  compatriot  friends  —  too 
heartless  for  the  sublime  interest  of  their  story,  and 
too  impatient  for  the  labor  of  sifting  its  perplexities  —' 
to  the  magnanimity  and  justice  of  enemies.  To  this 
class  belongs  the  Maid  of  Arc.  The  ancient  Homans 
were  too  faithful  to  the  ideal  of  grandeur  in  themselves 
not  to  relent,  after  a  generation  or  two,  before  the 
grandeur  of  Hannibal.  Mithridates  —  a  more  doubt- 
ful person  —  yet  merely  for  the  magic  perseverance  of 
his  indomitable  malice,  won  from  the  same  Romans  the 
only  real  honor  that  ever  he  received  on  earth.  And 
we  English  have  ever  shown  the  same  homage  to  stub- 
born enmity.  To  work  unflinchingly  for  the  ruin  of 
England  ;  to  say  through  life,  by  word  and  by  deed, 
Delenda  est  Anglia  Victrix  !  that  one  purpose  of  mal- 
ice, faithfully  pursued,  has  quartered  some  people  upon 
our  national  funds  of  homage  as  by  a  perpetual  annu- 
ity. Better  than  an  inheritance  of  service  rendered 
to  England  herself,  has  sometimes  proved  the  most 
insane  hatred  to  England.  Hyder  Ali,  even  his  son 
Tippoo,  though  so  far  inferior,  and  Napoleon,  have  all 
benefited  by  this  disposition  amongst  ourselves  to  ex- 
aggerate the  merit  of  diabolic  enmity.  Not  one  of 
these  men  was  ever  capable,  in  a  solitary  instance,  of 
praising  an  enemy  [what  do  you  say  to  that,  reader  ?], 
and  yet  in  their  behalf,  we  cons':  nt  to  forget,  not  their 
cnmes  only,  but  (which  is  worse)  their  hideous  bigotry 
tnd  «nti-magnanimous  egotism,  for  nationality  it  was 
*ot.     Suffrein,  and  some  half  dozen  of  other  French 


184  JOAN    OF    ABC. 

aa\iti(»d  heroes,  because  rightly  they  did  us  all  the 
mischief  they  could  (which  was  really  great),  are  names 
justly  reverenced  in  England.  On  the  same  principle. 
La  PuceUe  d'Orleans,  the  victorious  enemy  of  England, 
has  been  destined  to  receive  her  deepest  commemora- 
tion from  the  magnanimous  justice  of  Englishmen. 

Joanna,  as  we  in  England  should  call  her,  but,  accord- 
ing to  her  own  statement,  Jeanne  (or,  as  M.  Michelet 
asserts,  Jean*^)  D'Arc,  was  born  at  Domremy,  a  vil- 
lage on  the  marches  of  Lorraine  and  Champagne,  and 
dependent  upon  the  town  of  Vaucouleurs.  I  have 
called  her  a  LoiTainer,  not  simply  because  the  word 
is  prettier,  but  because  Champagne  too  odiously  re- 
minds us  English  of  what  are  for  us  imaginary  mnes, 
which,  undoubtedly.  La  Pucelle  tasted  as  rarely  as  we 
English  ;  we  English,  because  the  Champagne  of  Lon- 
don is  chiefly  grown  in  Devonshire ;  La  Pucelle,  be- 
cause the  Champagne  of  Champagne  never,  by  any 
chance,  flowed  into  the  fountain  of  Domremy,  from 
which  only  she  drank.  M.  Michelet  will  have  her  to 
be  a  Champenoise,  and  for  no  better  reason  than  that 
she  '  took  after  her  father,'  who  happened  to  be  a  Cham- 
penois. 

These  disputes,  however,  turn  on  refinements  too 
nice.  Domremy  stood  upon  the  frontiers,  and,  like 
other  frontiers,  produced  a  mixed  race  representing  the 
cis  and  the  trans.  A  river  (it  is  true)  formed  the 
bo  mdary-line  at  this  point  —  the  river  Meuse ;  and 
that,  in  old  days,  might  have  divided  the  populations  ; 
but  in  these  days  it  did  not :  there  were  bridges,  there 
were  ferries,  and  weddings  crossed  from  the  right  bank 
JO  the  left.  Here  lay  two  great  roads,  not  so  much 
aor  travellers  that  were  f3w,  as  for  armies  that  were 


JOAX    OF    ARC.  184 

too  many  b/  half.  These  two  roads,  one  of  which 
was  the  great  high  road  between  France  and  Germany, 
decussated  at  this  very  point ;  which  is  a  learned  \ray 
of  saying,  that  they  formed  a  St.  Andrew's  cross,  cr 
letter  X.  I  hope  the  compositor  will  choose  a  good 
large  X,  in  which  case  the  point  of  intersection,  the 
locus  of  conflux  and  intersection  for  these  four  diverg- 
ing arms,  will  finish  the  reader's  geographical  educa- 
tion, by  showing  him  to  a  hair's-breadth  where  it  waa 
that  Domremy  stood.  Those  roads,  so  grandly  situa- 
ted, as  great  trunk  arteries  between  two  mighty 
realms,^-  and  haunted  for  ever  by  wars,  or  rumors  of 
wars,  decussated  (for  anything  I  know  to  the  contrary) 
absolutely  under  Joanna's  bedroom  window;  one  roll- 
ing away  to  the  right,  past  Monsieur  D'Arc's  old  barn, 
and  the  other  unaccountably  preferring  to  sweep  round 
that  odious  man's  pigsty  to  the  left. 

On  whichever  side  of  the  border  chance  had  thrown 
Joanna,  the  same  love  to  France  would  have  been  nur- 
tured. For  it  is  a  strange  fact,  noticed  by  M.  Michelet 
and  others,  that  the  Dukes  of  Bar  and  Lorraine  had 
for  generations  pursued  the  policy  of  eternal  warfare 
with  France  on  their  own  account,  yet  also  of  eternal 
aniity  and  league  with  France,  in  case  anybody  else 
presumed  to  attack  her.  Let  peace  settle  upon  France, 
and  before  long  you  might  rely  upon  seeing  the  little 
vixen  Lorraine  flying  at  the  throat  of  France.  Let 
France  be  assailed  by  a  formidable  enemy,  and  in- 
stantly you  saw  a  Duke  of  Lorraine  insisting  on  hav- 
ing his  own  throat  cut  in  support  of  France ;  which 
lavor  accordingly  was  cheerfully  granted  to  him  in 
'tree  great  successive  battles  —  tynce  by  the  English, 
nz.,  at  Crecy  and  Agincourt,  once  by  the  Sultan  ai 
Nicopolis. 


l86  JOAN     OF    ARC. 

This  sympathy  with  France  during  great  eclipses,  m 
those  that  during  ordinary  seasons  were  always  teasing 
hor  with  brawls  and  guerilla  inroads,  strengthened  the 
natural  piety  to  France  of  those  that  were  confessedly 
the  children  of  her  own  house.  The  outpostn  of 
France,  as  one  may  call  the  great  frontier  provinces, 
were  of  all  localities  the  most  devoted  to  the  Fleurs 
de  Lys.  To  witness,  at  any  great  crisis,  the  generous 
devotion  to  these  lilies  of  the  little  fiery  cousin  that 
in  gentler  weather  was  for  ever  tilting  at  the  breast  of 
France,  could  not  but  fan  the  zeal  of  France's  legiti- 
mate daughters :  whilst  to  occupy  a  post  of  honor  on 
the  frontiers  against  an  old  hereditary  enemy  of  France, 
would  naturally  stimulate  this  zeal  by  a  sentiment  of 
martial  pride,  by  a  sense  of  danger  always  threatening, 
and  of  hatred  always  smouldering.  That  great  four- 
headed  road  was  a  perpetual  memento  to  patriotic 
ardor.  To  say,  this  way  lies  the  road  to  Paris,  and 
that  other  way  to  Aix-la-Chapelle  —  this  to  Prague, 
that  to  Vienna  —  nourished  the  warfare  of  the  heart 
by  daily  ministrations  of  sense.  The  eye  that  watched 
for  the  gleams  of  lance  or  helmet  from  the  hostile 
frontier,  the  ear  that  listened  for  the  groaning  of 
Tvheels,  made  the  high  road  itself,  with  its  relations  to 
centres  so  remote,  into  a  manual  of  patriotic  duty. 

The  situation,  therefore,  locally,  of  Joanna  was  full 
of  profound  suggestions  to  a  heart  that  listened  for  the 
stealthy  steps  of  change  and  fear  that  too  surely  were 
n  motion.  But,  if  the  place  were  grand,  the  time, 
the  burden  of  the  time,  was  far  more  so.  The  aii 
Dverhead  in  its  upper  chambers  was  hurtling  with  the 
tbscure  sound ;  was  dark  with  sullen  fermenting  of 
(terms  that  had  been  gathering  for   a  hundred  anA 


JOAN    OF    AKC.  187 

;hirty  years.  The  battle  of  Agincourt  in  Joanna's 
rhildhood  had  re-opened  the  wounds  of  France.  Crecy 
ind  Poictiers,  those  withering  overthrows  fc  r  the 
jhivalry  of  France,  had,  before  Agincourt  occurred, 
jeen  tranquillized  by  more  than  half  a  century ;  but 
.his  resurrection  of  their  trumpet  wails  made  the 
whole  series  of  battles  and  endless  skirmishes  take 
their  stations  as  parts  in  one  drama.  The  graves  that 
had  closed  sixty  years  ago,  seemed  to  fly  open  in  sym- 
pathy with  a  sorrow  that  echoed  their  own.  The 
monarchy  of  France  labored  in  extremity,  rocked  and 
reeled  like  a  ship  fighting  with  the  darkness  of  mon- 
soons. The  madness  of  the  poor  king  (Charles  VI.) 
falling  in  at  such  a  crisis,  like  the  case  of  women 
laboring  in  childbirth  during  the  storming  of  a  city, 
trebled  the  awfulness  of  the  time.  Even  the  wild 
Btory  of  the  incident  which  had  immediately  occasioned 
the  explosion  of  this  madness  —  the  case  of  a  man 
unknown,  gloomy,  and  perhaps  maniacal  himself^ 
coming  out  of  a  forest  at  noonday,  laying  his  hand 
upon  the  bridle  of  the  king's  horse,  checking  him  for 
a  moment  to  say,  '  Oh,  king,  thou  art  betrayed,'  and 
then  vanishing,  no  man  knew  whither,  as  he  had  ap- 
peared for  no  man  knew  what  —  fell  in  with  the  uni- 
versal prostration  of  mind  that  laid  France  on  her 
knees,  as  before  the  slow  unweaving  of  some  ancient 
prophetic  doom.  The  famines,  the  extraordinary  dis- 
eases, the  insurrections  of  the  peasantry  up  and  down 
Europe  —  these  were  chords  struck  from  the  aame 
T^ysterious  harp ;  but  these  were  transitory  chords. 
There  have  been  others  of  deeper  and  more  ominous 
iound.  The  termination  of  the  Crusades,  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  Templars,  the  Papal  interdicts,  the  tragedies 


188  JOAN    OF    ARC. 

r^xise;d  or  suffered  by  the  house  of  Anjou,  and  by  the 
emperor  —  these  were  fidl  of  a  more  permanent  signi* 
f  cance.  But,  since  then,  the  colossal  figure  of  feudal- 
ism was  seen  standing,  as  it  were,  on  tiptoe,  at  Crecy, 
for  flight  from  earth :  that  was  a  revolution  unparal- 
leled ;  yet  that  was  a  trifle,  by  comparison  with  the 
more  fearful  revolutions  that  were  mining  below  the 
church.  By  her  own  internal  schisms,  by  the  abomi- 
nable spectacle  of  a  double  pope  —  so  that  no  man, 
except  through  political  bias,  could  even  guess  which 
was  Heaven's  vicegerent,  and  which  the  creature  of 
hell  —  the  church  was  rehearsing,  as  in  still  earlier 
forms  she  had  already  rehearsed,  those  vast  rents  in 
her  foundations  which  no  man  should  ever  heal. 

These  were  the  loftiest  peaks  of  the  cloudland  in  the 
skies,  that  to  the  scientific  gazer  first  caught  the  colors 
of  the  new  moining  in  advance.  But  the  whole  vast 
range  alike  of  sweeping  glooms  overhead,  dwelt  upon 
all  meditative  minds,  Qven  upon  those  that  could  not 
distinguish  the  tendencies  nor  decipher  the  forms.  It 
was,  therefore,  not  her  own  age  alone,  as  afi'ected  by 
its  immediate  calamities,  that  lay  yrith  such  weight 
upon  Joanna's  mind ;  but  her  own  age,  as  one  section 
in  a  vast  mysterious  drama,  unweaving  through  a  cen- 
tury back,  and  drawing  nearer  continually  to  some 
dreadful  crisis.  Cataracts  and  rapids  were  heard 
roaring  ahead ;  and  signs  were  seen  far  back,  by  help 
of  old  men's  memories,  which  answered  secretly  to 
signs  now  coming  forward  on  the  eye,  even  as  locks 
answer  to  keys.  It  was  not  wonderful  that  in  such  a 
haunted  solitude,  with  such  a  haunted  heart,  Joanns 
should  see  angelic  visions,  and  hear  angelic  voices 
These  voices  whispered  to  her  for  ever  the  duty,  self 


/OA.N    OF    AKC.  189 

imposed,  of  delivering  France.  Five  years  she  listened 
to  these  monitory  voices  with  internal  struggles.  At 
length  she  could  resist  no  longer.  Doubt  gave  way ; 
»nd  she  left  her  home  for  ever  in  order  to  present  her- 
■elf  at  the  dauphin's  court. 

The  education  of  this  poor  girl  was  mean  according 
to  the  present  standard :  was  ineffably  grand,  accord- 
ing to  a  purer  philosophic  standard :  and  only  not  gooc 
for  our  age,  because  for  us  it  would  be  urotttainable. 
She  read  nothing,  for  she  could  not  read ;  but  she  had 
heard  others  read  parts  of  the  Roman  martyrology. 
She  wept  in  sympathy  with  the  sad  Misereres  of  the 
Romish  church ;  she  rose  to  heaven  witii  the  glad  tri- 
umphant Te  Deums  of  Rome  :  she  drew  her  comfort  and 
her  vital  strength  from  the  rites  of  the  same  church. 
But,  next  after  these  spiritual  advantages,  she  owed  most 
to  the  advantages  of  her  situation.  The  fountain  of  Dom- 
remy  was  on  the  brink  of  a  boundless  forest ;  and  it  was 
haunted  to  that  degree  by  fairies,  that  the  parish  priest 
{cure)  was  obliged  to  read  mass  there  once  a-year,  in 
order  to  keep  them  in  any  decent  bounds.  Fairies  are 
important,  even  in  a  statistical  view :  certain  weeds 
mark  poverty  in  the  soU,  fairies  mark  its  solitude.  As 
surely  as  the  wolf  retires  before  cities,  does  the  fairy 
sequester  herself  from  the  haunts  of  the  licensed  vict- 
ualler. A  village  is  too  much  for  her  nervous  delicacy  : 
at  most,  she  can  tolerate  a  distant  view  of  a  hamlet. 
We  may  judge,  therefore,  by  the  uneasiness  and  extra 
^rouble  which  they  gave  to  the  parson,  in  what 
strength  the  fairies  mustered  at  Domremy  ;  and,  by  a 
satisfactory  consequence,  how  thinly  sown  with  men 
and  women  must  have  been  that  region  even  in  iti 
mnaoited  spots.     But  the  forests  of  Domremy  —  thosv 


190  JOA.N    OF    A.EC. 

were  the  glories  of  the  land :  for  in  them  abode  mjr** 
terious  power  and  ancient  secrets  that  towered  into 
tragic  strength.  '  Abbeys  there  were,  and  abbey 
windows,'  — '  like  Moorish  temples  of  the  Hindoos,' 
that  exercised  even  princely  power  both  in  Lorraine 
and  in  the  German  Diets.  These  had  their  sweet  bells 
that  pierced  the  forests  for  many  a  league  at  matiiu 
or  vespers,  and  each  its  own  dreamy  legend.  Few 
enough,  and  scattered  enough,  were  these  abbeys,  so 
as  in  no  degree  to  disturb  the  deep  solitude  of  the 
region ;  yet  many  enough  to  spread  a  network  or  awn- 
ing of  Christian  sanctity  over  what  else  might  have 
seemed  a  heathen  wilderness.  This  sort  of  religious 
talisman  being  secured,  a  man  the  most  afraid  of 
ghosts  (like  myself,  suppose,  or  the  reader)  becomes 
armed  into  courage  to  wander  for  days  in  their  sylvan 
recesses.  The  mountains  of  the  Vosges,  on  the  east- 
ern frontier  of  France,  have  never  attracted  much 
notice  from  Europe,  except  in  1813—14  for  a  few 
'jrief  months,  when  they  fell  within  Napoleon's  line 
of  defence  against  the  Allies.  But  they  are  interest- 
ing for  this,  amongst  other  features,  that  they  do  not, 
like  some  loftier  ranges,  repel  woods :  the  forests  and 
the  hills  are  on  sociable  terms.  Live  and  let  live,  is 
their  motto.  For  this  reason,  in  part,  these  tracts  in 
Lorraine  were  a  favorite  hunting-ground  with  the 
Carlovingian  princes.  About  six  hundred  years  before 
Joanna's  childhood,  Charlemagne  was  known  to  have 
hunted  there.  That,  of  itself,  was  a  grand  incident 
m  the  traditions  of  a  forest  or  a  chase.  In  these  vast 
forests,  also,  were  to  be  found  (if  anywhere  to  be 
found)  those  mysterious  fawns  that  tempted  solitary 
hunters  into  visionary  and  perilous   pursuits.     Herr 


JOAX    OF    ABC.  191 

«ra8  seen  (if  anywhere  seen)  that  ancient  stag  who 
uras  already  nine  hundred  years  old,  but  possibly  a 
bundred  or  two  more,  when  met  by  Charlemagne ;  and 
the  thing  was  put  beyond  doubt  by  the  inscription 
upon  his  golden  collar.  I  believe  Charlemagne  knight- 
ed the  stag ;  and,  if  ever  he  is  met  again  by  a  king,  he 
ought  to  be  made  an  earl  —  or,  being  upon  the  marches 
of  France,  a  marquis.  Observe,  I  don't  absolutely 
vouch  for  all  these  things:  my  own  opinion  varies. 
On  a  fine  breezy  forenoon  I  am  audaciously  sceptical ; 
but,  as  twilight  sets  in,  my  credulity  grows  steadily, 
till  it  becomes  equal  to  anything  that  could  be  desired. 
And  I  have  heard  candid  sportsmen  declare  that,  out- 
side of  these  very  forests,  they  laughed  loudly  at  aU 
the  dim  tales  connected  with  their  haunted  solitudes; 
hut,  on  reaching  a  spot  notoriously  eighteen  milea 
deep  within  them,  they  agreed  with  Sir  Roger  de  Cov- 
erley,  that  a  good  deal  might  be  said  on  both  sides. 

Such  traditions,  or  any  others  that  (like  the  stag) 
connect  distant  generations  with  each  other,  are,  for 
that  cause,  sublime  ;  and  the  sense  of  the  shado^vy, 
connected  with  such  appearances  that  reveal  themselves 
or  not  according  to  circumstances,  leaves  a  coloring  of 
sanctity  over  ancient  forests,  even  in  those  minds  tbflt 
utterly  reject  the  legend  as  a  fact. 

But,  apart  from  aU  distinct  stories  of  that  order,  in 
any  solitary  frontier  between  two  great  empires,  as 
here,  for  instance,  or  in  the  desert  between  Syria  and 
Ihe  Euphrates,  there  is  an  inevitable  tendency  in 
minds  of  any  deep  sensibility,  to  people  the  solitudes 
with,  phantom  images  of  powers  that  were  of  old  so 
▼ast.  Jo8mna,  therefore,  in  her  quiet  occupation  of  • 
•hepherdess,  would  be  led  continually  to  brood  ovet 


192  JOAN    OF    ARC. 

the  political  condition  of  her  country,  by  the  traditions 
of  the  past  no  less  than  by  the  mementoes  of  the  local 
present. 

M.  Michelet,  indeed,  says  that  La  Pucelle  was  not  a 
shepherdess.  I  beg  his  pardon :  she  was.  What  he 
rests  upon,  I  guess  pretty  well :  it  is  the  evidence  of  a 
woman  called  Haumette,  the  most  confidential  friend 
of  Joanna.  Now,  she  is  a  good  Avitness,  and  a  good 
girl,  and  I  like  her ;  for  she  makes  a  natural  and  affec- 
tionate report  of  Joanna's  ordinary  life.  But  still, 
however  good  she  may  be  as  a  witness,  Joanna  is 
better ;  and  she,  when  speaking  to  the  dauphin,  calls 
herself  in  the  Latin  report  Bergereta.  Even  Haumette 
confesses,  that  Joanna  tended  sheep  in  her  girlhood. 
And  I  believe,  that  if  Miss  Haumette  were  taking 
coffee  alone  with  me  this  very  evening  (February  12, 
1847)  —  in  which  there  would  be  no  subject  for  scandal 
for  or  maiden  blushes,  because  I  am  an  intense  philo- 
sopher, and  Miss  H.  would  be  hard  upon  four  hundred 
and  fifty  years  old  —  she  would  admit  the  following 
comment  upon  her  evidence  to  be  right.  A  French- 
man, about  forty  years  ago,  M.  Simond,  in  his  '  Travels,' 
mentions  incidently  the  following  hideous  scene  as  one 
steadily  observed  and  watched  by  himself  in  chivalrous 
France,  not  very  long  before  the  French  Revolution  : 
—  A  peasant  was  ploughing  ;  the  team  that  drew  his 
plough  was  a  donkey  and  %  woman.  Both  were  regu- 
larly liarnessed :  both  pulled  alike.  This  is  bad 
enough  ;  but  the  Frenchman  adds,  that,  in  distribut- 
ing his  lashes,  the  peasant  was  obviously  desirous  of 
being  impartial ;  or,  if  either  of  the  yoke-fellows  had 
a  right  to  complain,  certainly  it  was  not  the  donkey. 
Now,  in  any  country  where  such  degradation  of  fe- 


JOAN    OF    ABC.  198 

males  could  be  tolerated  by  the  state  of  manners,  a 

woraau  of  delicacy  would  shrink  from  acknowledging, 
either  for  herself  or  her  friend,  that  she  had  ever  been 
addicted  to  any  mode  of  labor  not  strictly  domestic ; 
because,  if  once  owning  herself  a  praedial  servant,  she 
would  be  sensible  that  this  confession  extended  by  prob- 
ability in  the  hearer's  thoughts  to  the  having  incurred 
indignities  of  this  horrible  kind.  Haumette  clearly 
thinks  it  more  dignified  for  Joanna  to  have  been  darn- 
ing the  stockings  of  her  horny-hoofed  father,  Monsieiir 
D'Arc,  than  keeping  sheep,  lest  she  might  then  be 
suspected  of  haying  ever  done  something  worse.  But, 
luckily,  there  was  no  danger  of  that :  Joanna  never 
was  in  service  ;  and  my  opinion  is,  that  her  father 
should  have  mended  his  own  stockings,  since  probably 
he  was  the  party  to  make  holes  in  them,  as  many  a 
better  man  than  D'Arc  does ;  meaning  by  that  not  my- 
self, because,  though  probably  a  better  man  than  D'Arc, 
I  protest  against  doing  anything  of  the  kind.  If  I 
lived  even  with  Friday  in  Juan  Fernandez,  either  Fri- 
day must  do  all  the  daining,  or  else  it  must  go  un- 
done. The  better  men  that  I  meant  were  the  sailors 
in  the  British  navy,  every  man  of  whom  mends  his 
own  stockings.  Who  else  is  to  do  it?  Do  you  sup- 
pose, reader,  that  the  junior  lords  of  the  admiralty  axe 
under  articles  to  darn  for  the  navy  ? 

The  reason,  meantime,  for  my  systematic  hatred  of 
D'Arc  is  this.  There  was  a  story  current  in  France 
before  the  Revolution,  framed  to  ridicule  the  pauper 
aristocracy,  who  happened  to  have  long  pedigrees  and 
«hort  rent  rolls,  viz.,  that  a  head  of  such  a  house,  dating 
from  the  Crusades,  was  overheard  saying  to  his  son,  • 
Chevalier  of  Sfc.  Louis,  '  Chevalier,  as-tu  donne  cm 
13 


194  JOAN     OF    A.BC. 

toehon  a  manger/*  Now,  it  is  clearly  made  out  by 
the  8urvi\Ing  Rvidence,  that  D'Arc  would  much  have 
preferred  continuing  to  say,  '  Ma  Jille  as-tii  donne  tut 
cocJwn  a  manger  7  '  to  saying,  Pueelle  d'  Orleans,  as-tu 
tauve  los  Jleurs-de-lys  ?  '  There  is  an  old  English  copy 
of  verses  which  argues  thus  :  — 

•  If  the  man  that  turnips  cries, 
Cry  not  when  his  father  dies  — 
Then  'tis  plain  the  man  had  rather — 
Have  a  turnip  than  his  father.' 

I  cannot  say  that  the  logic  in  these  verses  was  ever 
entirely  to  my  satisfaction.  I  do  not  see  my  way 
through  it  as  clearly  as  could  be  wished.  But  I  see 
my  way  most  clearly  through  D'Arc  ;  and  the  result 
is  —  that  he  would  greatly  have  preferred  not  mere- 
ly a  turnip  to  bis  father,  but  saving  a  pound  or  so  of 
bacon  to  saving  the  Ortflamme  of  France. 

It  is  probable  (as  M.  Michelet  suggests)  that  the 
title  of  Virgin,  or  Pueelle,  had  in  itself,  and  apart 
from  the  miraculous  stories  about  her,  a  secret  power 
over  the  rude  soldiery  and  partisan  chiefs  of  that 
period ;  for,  in  such  a  person,  they  saw  a  representa- 
tive manifestation  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  who  in  a 
oourse  of  centuries,  had  grown  steadily  upon  the 
popular  heart. 

As  to  Joanna's  supernatural  detection  of  the  dauphin 
(Charles  VII.)  amongst  three  hundred  lords  and 
Loights,  I  am  surprised  at  the  credulity  which  could 
ever  lend  itself  to  that  theatrical  juggle.  "WTio  ad- 
jures more  than  myself  the  sublime  enthusiasm,  the 
rapturous  faith  in  herself,  of  this  pure  creature  ?  But 
»  am  fai  from  admiring  stage  artifices,  which  not  I^ 
Puulle,  but  the  court,  must  have  airanged ;  nor  can 


/OA.N    OF    AKC.  195 

surrender  myself  to  the  conjurer's  legerdemavn^  such 
as  may  be  seen  every  day  for  a  shilling.  Southey'« 
'Joan  oi  Arc'  was  published  in  1796.  Twenty  years 
after,  talking  with  Southey,  1  was  surprised  to  find 
him  still  owning  a  secret  bias  in  favor  of  Joan,  founded 
on  her  detection  of  the  dauphin.  The  story,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  reader  new  to  the  case,  was  this  :  —  La 
Pucelle  was  first  made  known  to  the  dauphin,  and  pre- 
sented to  his  court,  at  Chinon:  and  here  came  her 
first  trial.  By  way  of  testing  her  supernatural  pre- 
tensions, she  was  to  find  out  the  royal  personage 
amongst  the  whole  ark  of  clean  and  unclean  creatures. 
Failing  in  this  coup  d'essai,  she  would  not  simply  dis- 
appoint many  a  beating  heart  in  the  glittering  crowd 
that  on  different  motives  yearned  for  her  success,  but 
she  would  ruin  herself — and,  as  the  oracle  within  had 
told  her,  would,  by  ruining  herself,  ruin  France.  Our 
own  sovereign  lady  Victoria  rehearses  annually  a  trial 
not  so  severe  in  degree,  but  the  same  in  kind.  She 
'  pricks '  for  sheriffs.  Joanna  pricked  for  a  king.  But 
observe  the  difference :  our  own  lady  pricks  for  two 
men  out  of  three ;  Joanna  for  one  man  out  of  three 
hundred.  Happy  Lady  of  the  islands  and  the  orient  * 
—  she  can  go  astray  in  her  choice  only  by  one  half; 
to  the  extent  of  one  half  she  must  have  the  satisfaction 
vf  being  right.  And  yet,  even  with  these  tight  limits 
to  the  misery  of  a  boundless  discretion,  permit  me, 
iiege  Lady,  with  all  loyalty,  to  submit  —  that  now  and 
hen  you  prick  with  your  pin  the  wrong  man.  But 
the  poor  child  from  Domreray,  shrinking  under  the 
gaze  of  a  dazzling  court  —  not  because  dazzling  (for  in 
risions  she  had  seeii  those  that  were  more  so),  but 
because  some  of  them  wore  a  scoffing  smile  on  their 


196  JOAX    OF    AHC. 

featurea  —  how  should  she  throw  her  line  into  so  deep 
a  river  to  angle  for  a  king,  where  many  a  gay  creature 
was  sporting  that  masqueraded  as  kings  in  dress? 
Nay,  even  more  than  any  true  king  would  have  done: 
for,  in  Southey's  version  of  the  story,  the  dauphin 
says,  by  way  of  trying  the  virgin's  magnetic  sympathy 
wiih  royalty, 

♦  On  the  throne, 
I  the  while  mingling  with  the  menial  throng. 
Some  courtier  shall  be  seated.' 

This  usurper  is  even  crowned  :  '  the  jewelled  crown 
shines  on  a  menial's  head.'  But,  really,  that  is  '  tm 
veu  fort ; '  and  the  mob  of  spectators  might  raise  a 
scruple  whether  our  friend  the  jackdaw  upon  the  throne, 
and  the  dauphin  himself,  were  not  grazing  the  shins 
of  treason.  For  the  dauphin  could  not  lend  more  than 
belonged  to  him.  According  to  the  popular  notion, 
he  had  no  crown  for  himself;  consequently  none  to 
lend,  on  any  pretence  whatever,  until  the  consecrated 
Maid  should  take  him  to  Rheims.  This  was  the  poptt^ 
iar  notion  in  France.  But,  certainly,  it  was  the 
dauphin's  interest  to  support  the  popular  notion,  as 
he  meant  to  use  the  services  of  Joanna.  For,  if  he 
were  king  already,  what  was  it  that  she  could  do  for 
him  beyond  Orleans  ?  That  is  to  say,  what  more  than 
a  mere  military  service  could  she  render  him  ?  And, 
fcbove  all,  if  he  were  king  without  a  coronation,  and 
without  the  oil  from  the  sacred  ampulla,  what  advan- 
tage was  yet  open  to  him  by  celerity  above  his  com- 
retitor  the  English  boy  ?  Now  was  to  be  a  race  for  a 
eoronation  :  he  that  should  win  that  race,  carried  th 
inperstition  of  France  along  with  him  :  he  that  should 


jrOAN    OF    AKC.  197 

first  be  drawn  from  the  ovens  of  Rheims,  was  under 
that  superstition  baked  into  a  king. 

La  Pucelle,  before  she  could  be  allowed  to  practise 
as  a  warrior,  was  put  through  her  manual  and  platoon 
exercise,  as  a  pupil  in  divinity,  at  the  bar  of  six  emi- 
nent men  in  wigs.  According  to  Southey  (v.  393, 
Book  III.,  in  the  original  edition  of  bis  '  Joan  of 
Arc  '),  she  '  appalled  the  doctors.'  It's  not  easy  to  do 
that :  but  they  had  some  reason  to  feel  bothered,  as 
that  surgeon  would  assuredly  feel  bothered,  who,  upon 
proceeding  to  dissect  a  subject,  should  find  the  subject 
retaliating  as  a  dissector  upon  himself,  especially  if 
Joanna  ever  made  the  speech  to  them  which  occupies 
V,  354—391,  B.  III.  It  is  a  double  impossibility  :  Ist, 
because  a  piracy  from  Tindal's  '  Christianity  as  old  as 
the  Creation  '  —  a  piracy  a  parte  ante,  and  by  three 
centuries ;  2dly,  it  is  quite  contrary  to  the  evidence  on 
Joanna's  trial.  Southey's  '  Joan,'  of  a.  d.  1 796  (Cot- 
tle, Bristol),  tells  the  doctors,  amongst  other  secrets, 
that  she  never  in  her  life  attended —  1st,  Mass;  nor 
2d,  the  Sacramental  table.;  nor  3d,  Confession.  In 
the  meantime,  all  this  deistical  confession  of  Joanna's, 
besides  being  suicidal  for  the  interest  of  her  cause,  is 
opposed  to  the  depositions  upon  both  trials.  The  very 
sest  witness  called  from  first  to  last,  deposes  that 
Joanna  attended  these  rites  of  her  church  even  too 
pften ;  was  taxed  with  doing  so ;  and,  by  blushing, 
I  wned  the  charge  as  a  fact,  though  certainly  not  as  a 
"ault.  Joanna  was  a  girl  of  natural  piety,  that  saw 
Jod  in  forests,  and  hills,  and  fountains  ;  but  did  not 
the  less  seek  him  in  chapels  and  consecrated  oratories. 

This  peasant  girl  was  self-educated  through  her  own 
^tural   meditativeness.     If   ;ne  reader   turns  to  that 


198 


JOAN    OF    ARC. 


divine  passage  in  *  Paradise  Regained,'  which  MiltoB 
has  put  into  the  mouth  of  our  Saviour  when  first  en- 
tering the  wilderness,  and  musing  upon  the  tendency 
of  those  great  impulses  growing  within  himself — 

•  Oh,  what  a  multitude  of  thoughts  at  once 
Awaken'd  in  me  swarm,  while  I  consider 
What  from  within  I  feel  myself,  and  hear 
What  from  without  comes  often  to  my  ears, 
111  sorting  with  my  present  state  compared! 
When  I  was  yet  a  child,  no  childish  play 
To  me  was  pleasing;  all  my  mind  was  set 
Serious  to  learn  and  know,  and  thence  to  do 
What  might  be  public  good ;  myself  I  thought 
Born  to  that  end  '  — 

he  will  have  some  notion  of  the  vast  reveries  whict 
brooded  over  the  heart  of  Joanna  in  early  girlhood, 
when  the  wings  were  budding  that  should  carry  hei 
from  Orleans  to  Rheims ;  when  the  golden  chariot  waa 
dimly  revealing  itself,  that  should  carry  her  from  the 
kingdom  of  France  Delivered  to  the  eternal  kingdom. 
It  is  not  requifci*e,  for  the  honor  of  Joanna,  nor  is 
there,  in  this  place,  room  td  pursue  her  brief  career  of 
action.  That,  though  wonderful,  forms  the  earthly 
part  of  her  story  :  the  spiritual  part  is  the  saintly  pas- 
sion of  her  imprisonment,  trial,  and  execution.  It  if 
unfortunate,  therefore,  for  Southey's  '  Joan  of  Arc  * 
(which,  however,  should  always  be  regarded  as  a 
juvenile  effort),  that,  precisely  when  her  real  glory 
oegins,  the  poem  ends.  But  this  limitation  of  the 
interest  grew,  no  doubt,  from  the  constraint  inseparably 
attached  to  the  law  of  epic  unity.  Joanna's  history 
bisects  into  two  opposite  hemispheres,  and  both  coul(/ 
aot  have  been  presented  to  the  eye  in  one  poem,  un 
.et»  by  sacrificing  all  unity  of  theme,  or  else  by  involv 


JOAN    OF    ABC.  199 

ng  the  earlier  half,  as  a  narrative  episode,  in  the 
atter ;  which,  however,  might  have  been  done,  for  it 
might  have  been  commumcated  to  a  fellow-prisoner, 
or  a  confessor,  by  Joanna  herself.  It  is  sufficient,  as 
concerns  this  section  of  Joanna's  life,  to  say  that  she 
fulfilled,  to  the  height  of  her  promises,  the  restoralior 
of  the  prostrate  throne.  France  had  become  a  prov- 
ince of  England  ;  and  for  the  ruin  of  both,  if  such  a 
yoke  could  be  maintained.  Dreadful  pecuniary  ex- 
haustion caused  the  English  energy  to  droop;  and 
that  critical  opening  La  Pucelle  used  with  a  corres- 
ponding felicity  of  audacity  and  suddenness  (that  were 
in  themselves  portentous)  for  introducing  the  wedge 
of  French  native  resources,  for  rekindling  the  national 
pride,  and  for  planting  the  dauphin  once  more  upon 
Lis  feet.  When  Joanna  appeared,  he  had  been  on  the 
point  of  giving  up  the  struggle  with  the  English,  dis- 
tressed, as  they  were,  and  of  flying  to  the  south  of 
France.  She  taught  him  to  blush  for  such  abject 
counsels.  She  liberated  Orleans,  that  great  city,  so 
decisive  by  its  fate  for  the  issue  of  the  war,  and  then 
beleagured  by  the  English  with  an  elaborate  applica- 
tion of  engineering  skill  unprecedented  in  Europe, 
Entering  the  city  after  sunset,  on  the  29th  of  April, 
she  sang  mass  on  Sunday,  May  8,  for  the  entire  dis- 
appearance of  the  besieging  force.  On  the  29  th  of 
Tune,  she  fought  and  gained  over  the  English  the 
decisive  battle  of  Patay  ;  on  the  9th  of  July,  she  took 
Troyes  by  a  coup-de-main  ^rom  a  mixed  garrison  of 
English  and  Burgundians ;  on  the  15th  of  that  month, 
•he  carried  the  dauphin  into  Rheims ;  on  Sunday 
the  17th,  she  crowned  him  •  and  there  she  rested 
fcom  her  labor  of  triumph.     All  that  was  to  be  done, 


iOO  JOAN    OF    ABC. 

she  had  now  accomplished :  what  remained  was  —  to 
tuffer. 

All  this  forward  movement  was  her  own :  excepting 
one  man,  the  whole  council  was  against  her.  Hei 
enemies  were  all  that  drew  power  from  earth.  Her 
supporters  were  her  own  strong  enthusiasm,  and  the 
headlong  contagion  by  which  she  carried  this  sublime 
frenzy  into  the  hearts  of  women,  of  soldiers,  and  of  all 
who  lived  by  labor.  Henceforwards  she  was  thwarted ; 
and  the  worst  error  that  she  committed  was,  to  lend 
the  sanction  of  her  presence  to  counsels  which  she  had 
ceased  to  approve.  But  she  had  now  accomplished 
the  capital  objects  which  her  own  visions  had  dictated. 
These  involved  all  the  rest.  Errors  were  now  less 
important ;  and  doubtless  it  had  now  become  more 
difficult  for  herself  to  pronounce  authentically  what 
were  errors.  The  noble  girl  had  achieved,  as  by  a 
rapture  of  motion,  the  capital  end  of  clearing  out  a 
free  space  around  her  sovereign,  giving  him  the  power 
to  move  his  arms  with  effect ;  and,  secondly,  the  inap- 
preciable end  of  winning  for  that  sovereign  what  seem- 
3d  to  all  France  the  heavenly  ratification  of  his  rights, 
by  crowning  him  with  the  ancient  solemnities.  She  had 
made  it  impossible  for  the  English  now  to  step  before 
her.  They  were  caught  in  an  irretrievable  blunder, 
'wing  partly  to  discord  amongst  the  uncles  of  Henry 
VI.,  partly  to  a  want  of  funds,  but  partly  to  the  very 
impossibility  which  they  believed  to  press  with  tenfold 
ibrce  upon  any  French  attempt  to  forestall  theirs. 
They  laughed  at  sach  a  thought;  and  whilst  they 
laughed,  she  did  it.  Henceforth  the  single  redress 
for  the  English  of  this  capital  oversight,  but  which 
never  coidd  have  redressed  it  effectually,  was,  to  vitiate 


JOA.ir   OF   AKO.  2QI 

md  taint  the  coronation  of  Charles  VII.  as  the  work 

of  a  witch.  That  policy,  and  not  malice  (as  M. 
Michelet  is  so  happy  to  believe),  was  the  moving 
principle  in  the  subsequent  prosecution  of  Joanna. 
Unless  they  unhinged  the  force  of  the  first  coronation 
in  the  popular  mind,  by  associating  it  with  power  given 
from  hell,  they  felt  that  the  sceptre  of  the  invader 
was  broken. 

But  she,  the  child  that,  at  nineteen,  had  wrought 
wonders  so  great  for  France,  was  she  not  elated?  Did 
she  not  lose,  as  men  so  often  have  lost,  all  sobriety  of 
mind  when  standing  upon  the  pinnacle  of  success  so 
giddy  ?  Let  her  enemies  declare.  During  the  pro- 
gress of  her  movement,  and  in  the  centre  of  ferocious 
struggles,  she  had  manifested  the  temper  of  her  feel- 
ings, by  the  pity  which  she  had  everywhere  expressed 
tor  the  suffering  enemy.  She  forwarded  to  the  English 
leaders  a  touching  invitation  to  unite  with  the  French, 
as  brothers,  in  a  common  crusade  against  infidels,  thus 
opening  the  road  for  a  soldierly  retreat.  She  inter- 
posed to  protect  the  captive  or  the  wounded — she 
mourned  over  the  excesses  of  her  countrymen — she 
threw  herself  off  her  horse  to  kneel  by  the  dying 
English  soldier,  and  to  comfort  him  with  such  minis- 
trations, physical  or  spiritual,  as  his  situation  allowed. 
'  Nolebat,'  says  the  evidence,  '  uti  ense  suo,  aut  quem- 
quam  interficere.'  She  sheltered  the  English,  that 
javoked  her  aid,  in  her  own  quarters.  She  wept  as 
■he  beheld,  stretched  on  the  field  of  battle,  so  many 
brave  enemies  that  had  died  without  confession.  And, 
»8  regarded  herself,  her  e^atijn  expressed  itself  thus: 
— On  the  day  when  she  had  finished  her  work,  she 
Wept ;  for  she  knew  that,  when  her  triumphal  task  was 


102  JOAN    OF    ABC. 

done,  her  end  must  be  approaching.  Her  aspirationi 
pointed  only  to  a  place,  which  seemed  to  her  more 
than  usually  full  of  natural  piety,  as  one  in  which  it 
would  give  her  pleasure  to  die.  And  she  uttered, 
between  smiles  and  tears,  as  a  wish  that  inexpressibly 
fascinated  her  heart,  and  yet  was  half-fantastic,  a 
broken  prayer,  that  God  would  return  her  to  the  soli- 
tudes from  which  he  had  drawn  her,  and  sufiFer  her  to 
become  a  shepherdess  once  more.  It  was  a  natural 
prayer,  because  nature  has  Itiid  a  necessity  upon  every 
human  heart  to  seek  for  rest,  and  to  shrink  from 
torment.  Yet,  again,  it  was  a  half-fantastic  prayer, 
because,  from  childhood  upwards,  visions  that  she  had 
no  power  to  mistrust,  and  the  voices  which  sounded  in 
her  ear  for  ever,  had  long  since  persuaded  her  mind, 
that  for  her  no  such  prayer  could  be  granted.  Too 
well  she  felt  that  her  mission  must  be  worked  out  to 
the  end,  and  that  the  end  was  now  at  hand.  All 
went  wrong  from  this  time.  She  herself  had  created 
the  funds  out  of  which  the  Fren  ch  restoration  should 
grow ;  but  she  was  not  suflFered  to  witness  their  de- 
velopment, or  their  prosperous  application.  More 
than  one  military  plan  was  entered  upon  which  she 
did  not  approve.  But  she  still  continued  to  expose 
her  person  as  before.  Severe  wounds  had  not  taughl 
her  caution.  And  at  length,  in  a  sortie  from  Com- 
peigne  (whether  through  treacherous  collusion  on  the 
part  of  her  own  friends  is  doubtful  to  this  day),  she 
was  made  prisoner  by  the  Burgundians,  and  finally 
surrendered  to  the  English. 

Now  came  her  trial.  This  trial,  moving  of  course 
under  English  influence,  was  conducted  in  chief  by  tbe 
Bishop  of  Beauvais.     He  was  a  Frenchman,   sold   tc 


JOAK    OF    ABC.  208 

English  interests,  and  hoping,  by  favor  of  the  Eng- 
lish leaders,  to  reach  the  highest  preferment.  Bishop 
that  art.  Archbishop  that  shall  be,  Cardinal  that  mayest 
be,  were  the  words  that  sounded  continually  in  his  ear ; 
»nd  doubtless,  a  whisper  of  visions  still  higher,  of  a 
triple  crown,  and  feet  upon  the  necks  of  kings,  some- 
tinfies  stole  into  his  heart.  M.  Michelet  is  anxious  to 
keep  us  in  mind  that  this  bishop  was  but  an  agent  of 
tie  English.  True.  But  it  does  not  better  the  case 
for  his  countryman  —  that,  being  an  accomplice  in  the 
crime,  making  himself  the  leader  in  the  persecution 
against  the  helpless  girl,  he  was  willing  to  be  all  this 
in  Ihe  spirit,  and  with  the  conscious  vileness  of  a  cat's- 
paw.  Never  from  the  foundations  of  the  earth  wa« 
there  such  a  trial  as  this,  if  it  were  laid  open  in  all  its 
beauty  of  defence,  and  all  its  hellishness  of  attack.  Oh, 
child  of  France !  shepherdess,  peasant  girl !  trodden 
under  foot  by  all  around  thee,  how  I  honor  thy  flash- 
ing intellect,  quick  as  God's  lightning,  and  true  as 
God's  lightning  to  its  mark,  that  ran  before  France 
and  laggard  Europe  by  many  a  century,  confounding 
the  malice  of  the  ensnarer,  and  making  dumb  the 
oracles  of  falsehood !  Is  it  not  scandalous,  is  it 
not  humiliating  to  civilization,  that,  even  at  this 
day,  France  exhibits  the  horrid  spectacle  of  judges 
»xamining  the  prisoner  against  himself;  seducing 
him,  by  fraud,  into  treacherous  concludons  against 
his  own  head ;  using  the  terrors  of  their  power  foi 
extorting  confessions  from  the  frailty  of  hope;  nay 
(which  is  worse)  using  the  blandishments  of  conde- 
icension  and  snaky  kindness  for  thawing  into  compli- 
ances of  gratitude  those  whom  they  had  failed  to 
freeze  into  terror  ?     Wicked  judges !     Barbarian  juris* 


204  JOAN    OF    ARC. 

prud'jnce !  that,  sitting  in  your  own  conceit  on  the 
summits  of  social  wisdom,  nave  yet  failed  to  learn  the 
first  principles  of  criminal  justice  ;  sit  ye  humbly  and 
with  docility  at  the  feet  of  this  girl  from  Domremy, 
that  tore  your  webs  of  cruelty  into  shreds  and  dust. 
'  Would  you  examine  me  as  a  witness  against  myself  ?  ' 
was  the  question  by  which  many  times  she  defied  their 
arts.  Continually  she  showed  that  their  interrogations 
were  irrelevant  to  any  business  before  the  couit,  or 
that  entered  into  the  ridiculous  charges  against  her. 
General  questions  were  proposed  to  her  on  points  of 
cas'ustical  divinity ;  two-edged  questions,  which  not 
one  of  themselves  could  have  answered  without,  on 
the  one  side,  landing  himself  in  heresy  (as  then  inter- 
preted), or,  on  the  other,  in  some  presumptuous 
expression  of  self-esteem.  Next  came  a  wretched 
Dominican,  that  pressed  her  with  an  objection,  which, 
if  applied  to  the  Bible  would  tax  every  one  of  its 
miracles  with  unsoundness.  The  monk  had  the  excuse 
of  never  having  read  the  Bible.  M.  Michelet  has  no 
«uch  excuse  ;  and  it  makes  one  blush  for  him,  as  a 
philosopher,  to  find  him  describing  such  an  argument 
as  '  weighty,'  whereas  it  is  but  a  varied  expression  of 
rude  Mahometan  metaphysics.  Her  answer  to  this,  if 
there  were  room  to  place  the  whole  in  a  clear  light, 
was  as  shattering  as  it  was  rapid.  Another  thought 
.0  entrap  her  by  asking  what  language  the  angelic 
visitors  of  her  solitude  had  talked  ;  as  though  heavenly 
counsels  could  want  polyglot  interpreters  for  every 
word,  or  that  God  needed  language  at  all  in  whisper- 
mg  thoughts  to  a  human  heart.  Then  came  a  worse 
devil,  who  asked  her  whether  the  archangel  Michael  had 
appeared  naked.    Not  comprehending  the  vil"  iusinua. 


JOAN    OF   ABC.  205 

.ion,  Joanna,  whose  poverty  suggested  to  Lei  bimplicity 
that  it  might  be  the  costliness  of  suitable  robes  which 
caused  the  demur,  asked  them  if  they  fancied  God, 
who  clothed  the  flowers  of  the  valleys,  unable  to  find 
raiment  for  his  servants.  The  answer  of  Joanna 
moves  a  smile  of  tenderness,  but  the  disappointment 
of  her  judges  makes  one  laugh  exultingly.  Others 
succeeded  by  troops,  who  upbraided  her  with  leaving 
her  father ;  as  if  that  greater  Father,  whom  she  believed 
herself  to  have  been  serving,  did  not  retain  the  power 
of  dispensing  with  his  own  rules,  or  had  not  said, 
that,  for  a  less  cause  than  martyrdom,  man  and  woman 
should  leave  both  father  and  mother. 

On  Easter  Sunday,  when  the  trial  had  been  long 
proceeding,  the  poor  girl  fell  so  ill  as  to  cause  a  belief 
that  she  had  been  poisoned.  It  was  not  poison.  No- 
body had  any  interest  in  hastening  a  death  so  certain. 
M.  Michelet,  whose  sympathies  with  all  feelings  are  so 
quick,  that  one  would  gladly  see  them  always  as  justly 
directed,  reads  the  case  most  truly.  Joanna  had  a 
twofold  malady.  She  was  visited  by  a  paroxysm  of 
the  complaint  called  home-sickness ;  the  cruel  nature 
of  her  imprisonment,  and  its  length,  could  not  but 
point  her  solitary  thoughts,  in  darkness  and  in  chains 
(for  chained  she  was),  to  Domremy,  And  the  season, 
which  was  the  most  heavenly  period  of  the  spring, 
lidded  stings  to  this  yearning.  That  was  one  of  her 
maladies  —  nostalgia,  as  medicine  calls  it ;  the  other 
*'as  weariness  and  exhaustion  from  daily  combats  with 
malice.  She  saw  that  everybody  hated  her,  and 
fliirsted  for  her  blood  ;  nay,  many  kind-hearted  crea- 
hires  that  would  have  pitied  her  profoundly,  as  regard- 
id    all   political   chai'ges,   had   their   natural    feelinjgf 


206  JOA.N    OF    ARC. 

wrarped  by  the  belief  that  she  had  dealings  \vilh  fiend- 
ish powers.  She  knew  she  was  to  die ;  that  was  not 
the  misery :  the  misery  was,  that  this  consummation 
could  not  be  reached  without  so  much  intermediate 
strife,  as  if  she  were  contending  for  some  chance 
(where  chance  was  none)  of  happiness,  or  were  dream- 
ing for  a  moment  of  escaping  the  inevitable.  Why, 
then,  did  she  contend  ?  Knowing  that  she  would  reap 
nothing  from  answering  her  persecutors,  why  did  she 
not  retire  by  silence  from  the  superfluous  contest  ?  It 
was  because  her  quick  and  eager  loyalty  to  truth  would 
not  suffer  her  to  see  it  darkened  by  frauds,  which  she 
could  expose,  but  others,  even  of  candid  listeners, 
perhaps  could  not;  it  was  through  that  imperishable 
grandeur  of  soul,  which  taught  her  to  submit  meekly 
and  ^vithout  a  struggle  to  her  punishment,  but  taught 
her  not  to  submit  —  no,  not  for  a  moment  —  to  calum- 
ny as  to  facts,  or  to  misconstruction  as  to  motives. 
Besides,  there  were  secretaries  all  around  the  co\irt 
taking  down  her  words.  That  was  meant  for  no  good 
to  her.  But  the  end  does  not  always  correspond  to 
the  meaning.  And  Joanna  might  say  to  herself —  these 
words  that  will  be  used  against  me  to-morrow  and  the 
next  day,  perhaps  in  some  nobler  generation  may  rise 
again  for  my  justification.  Yes,  Joanna,  they  are  rising 
even  now  in  Paris,  and  for  more  than  justification. 

Woman,  sister  —  there  are  some  things  which  you 
do  not  execute  as  well  as  your  brother,  man ;  no,  nor 
ever  will.  Pardon  me,  if  I  doubt  whether  you  will 
ever  produce  a  great  poet  from  your  choirs,  or  a  Mo- 
Kut,  or  a  Phidias,  or  a  Michael  Angelo,  or  a  great 
philosopher,  or  a  great  scholar.  By  which  last  in 
taeanf;  —  not  one  w  ho  depends  simply  on  an  infinite 


JOAN    OF    ARC.  207 

memory,  but  also  on  an  infinite  and  electrical  powe/ 
of  combination  ;  bringing  together  from  the  four  winds, 
like  the  angel  of  the  resurrection,  what  else  were  dust 
from  dead  men's  bones,  into  the  unity  of  breathing 
life.  If  you  can  create  yourselves  into  any  of  these 
great  creators,  why  have  you  not  r 

Yet,  sister  woman,  though  I  cannot  consent  to  find 
a  Mozart  or  a  Michael  Angelo  in  your  sex,  cheerfully, 
and  with  the  love  that  burns  in  depths  of  admiration, 
I  acknowledge  that  you  can  do  one  thing  as  well  as 
the  best  of  us  men  —  a  greater  thing  than  even  Milton 
is  known  to  have  done,  or  Michael  Angelo  —  you  can 
die  grandly,  and  as  goddesses  would  die,  were  god- 
desses mortal.  If  any  distant  worlds  (which  may  be 
the  case)  are  so  far  ahead  of  us  Tellurians  in  opticaj 
resources,  as  to  see  distinctly  through  their  telescopes 
all  that  we  do  on  earth,  what  is  the  grandest  sight  to 
which  we  ever  treat  them  ?  St.  Peter's  at  Rome,  do 
you  fancy,  on  Easter  Sunday,  or  Luxor,  or  perhaps  the 
Himalayas  ?  Oh,  no  !  my  friend  :  suggest  something 
better ;  these  are  baubles  to  them ;  they  see  in  other 
worlds,  in  their  own,  far  better  toys  of  the  same  kind. 
These,  take  my  word  for  it,  are  nothing.  Do  you  give 
t  up  ?  The  finest  thing,  then,  we  have  to  show  them, 
is  a  scaffold  on  the  morning  of  execution.  I  assure 
you  there  is  a  strong  muster  in  those  far  telescopic 
worlds,  on  any  such  morning,  of  those  who  happen  to 
find  themselves  occupying  the  right  hemisphere  for  a 
peep  at  us.  How,  then,  if  it  be  announced  in  some 
•uch  telescopic  world  by  those  who  make  a  livelihood 
of  catching  glimpses  at  our  newspapers,  Those  lan- 
guage they  have  long  since  deciphered,  that  the  pool 
"^tim  in  the  morning's  sacrifice  is  a  woman  ?     How, 


208  JOAW    OF    ARR 

if  it  be  published  in  that  distant  world,  that  the  suf- 
ferer wears  upon  her  head,  in  the  eyes  of  many,  the 
garlands  of  martyrdom  ?  How,  if  it  should  be  some 
Marie  Antoinette,  the  widowed  queen,  coming  forward 
on  the  scaffold,  and  presenting  to  the  morning  air  her 
head  turned  gray  by  sorrow,  daughter  of  Caesars  kneel- 
ing down  humbly  to  kiss  the  guillotine,  as  one  that 
worships  death  ?  How,  if  it  were  the  noble  Charlotte 
Corday,  that  in  the  bloom  of  youth,  that  \\dth  the 
loveliest  of  persons,  that  with  homage  waiting  upon 
her  smiles  wherever  she  turned  her  face  to  scatter 
them  —  homage  that  followed  those  smiles  as  surely  as 
the  carols  of  birds,  after  showers  in  spring,  follow  the 
re-appearing  sun  and  the  racing  of  sunbeams  over  the 
hills  —  yet  thought  all  these  things  cheaper  than  the 
dust  upon  her  sandals,  in  comparison  of  deliverance 
from  hell  for  her  dear  suffering  France !  Ah  I  these 
were  spectacles  indeed  for  those  sympathizing  people 
in  distant  worlds  ;  and  some,  perhaps  would  suffer  a 
sort  of  martyrdom  themselves,  because  they  could  not 
testify  their  wrath,  could  not  bear  witness  to  the 
strength  of  love  and  to  the  fury  of  hatred  that  burned 
within  them  at  such  scenes;  could  not  gather  into 
golden  urns  some  of  that  glorious  dust  which  rested 
in  the  catacombs  of  earth. 

On  the  Wednesday  after  Trinity  Sunday  in  1431, 
being  then  about  nineteen  years  of  age,  the  Maid  of 
Arc  underwent  her  martjTdom.  She  was  conducted 
Before  mid-day,  guarded  by  eight  hundred  spearmen, 
to  a  platform  of  prodigious  height,  constructed  of 
wooilen  billets  supported  by  occasional  walls  of  latii 
tnd  plaster,  and  traversed  by  hollow  spaces  in  every 
iirection  for  the  creation  of  air-currents.     The  pile 


aOAW    OF   ARC.  209 

struck  terror,'  siys  M.  Michelet,  '  by  its  height ;'  and, 
AS  usual,  the  English  purpose  in  this  is  viewed  as  one 
of  pure  malignity.  But  there  are  two  ways  of  explain- 
ing all  that.  It  is  probable  that  the  purpose  was 
merciful.  On  the  circumstances  of  the  execution  I 
shall  not  linger.  Yet,  to  mark  the  almost  fatal  felicity 
of  M.  Michelet  in  finding  out  whatever  may  injure  the 
English  name,  at  a  moment  when  every  reader  will  be 
interested  in  Joanna's  personal  appearance,  it  is  really 
edifying  to  notice  the  ingenuity  by  which  he  draws 
into  light  from  a  dark  corner  a  very  unjust  account  of 
it,  and  neglects,  though  lying  upon  the  high  road,  a 
very  pleasing  one.  Both  are  from  English  pens. 
Grafton,  a  chronicler  but  little  read,  being  a  stifi"- 
necked  John  Bull,  thought  fit  to  say,  that  no  wonder 
Joanna  should  be  a  virgin,  since  her  '  ioxile  face '  was 
a  satisfactory  solution  of  that  particular  merit.  Hol- 
inshead,  on  the  other  hand,  a  chronicler  somewhat 
later,  every  way  more  important,  and  at  one  time 
universally  read,  has  given  a  very  pleasing  testimony 
to  the  interesting  character  of  Joanna's  person  and 
engaging  manners.  Neither  of  these  men  lived  till 
the  following  century,  so  that  personally  this  evidence 
is  none  at  all.  Grafton  sullenly  and  carelessly  be- 
lieved as  he  wished  to  believe  ;  Holinshead  took  pains 
to  inquire,  and  reports  undoubtedly  the  general  im- 
pression of  France.  But  I  cite  the  case  as  illustrating 
M.  Michelet's  candor.'*'^ 

The  circumstantial  incidents  of  the  execution,  unless 
^ith  more  space  than  I  can  now  command,  I  should  be 
inwilling  to  relate.  I  should  fear  to  injure,  by  im- 
perfect report,  a  martyrdom  which  to  myself  appeirs  so 
unspeakably  grand.  Yet  for  a  purpose,  pointing  not 
14 


210  JOAN    OF    ABC. 

at  Joanna,  but  at  M.  Michelet  —  vi?,.,  to  convince  Idnj 
that  an  Englishman  is  capable  of  thinking  more  highly 
of  La  Pucelle  than  even  her  admiring  countryman,  I 
shall,  in  parting,  allude  to  one  or  two  traits  in  Joanna't 
demeanor  on  the  scaffold,  and  to  one  or  two  iu  that  of 
the  bystanders,  which  authorize  me  in  questioning  an 
opmion  of  his  upon  this  martyr's  firmness.  The  reader 
ought  to  be  reminded  that  Joanna  D'Arc  was  subjected 
to  an  unusually  unfair  trial  of  opinion.  Any  of  the 
elder  Christian  martyrs  had  not  much  to  fear  of  per- 
sonal rancor.  The  martyr  was  chiefly  regarded  as  the 
enemy  of  Caesar ;  at  times,  also,  where  any  knowledge 
of  the  Christian  faith  and  morals  existed,  with  the 
enmity  that  arises  spontaneously  in  the  worldly  against 
the  spiritual.  But  the  martyr,  though  disloyal,  was 
not  supposed  to  be,  therefore,  anti-national ;  and  still 
less  was  individually  hateful.  What  was  hated  (if 
anything)  belonged  to  his  class,  not  to  himself  sepa- 
rately. Now,  Joanna,  if  hated  at  all,  was  hated  ppi- 
Bonally,  and  in  Rouen  on  national  grounds.  Hence 
there  would  be  a  certainty  of  calumny  arising  against 
her,  such  as  would  not  affect  martyrs  in  general.  That 
being  the  case,  it  would  follow  of  necessity  that  some 
people  would  impute  to  her  a  willingness  to  recant. 
No  innocence  could  escape  that.  Now,  had  she  really 
testified  this  willingness  on  the  scaffold,  it  would  have 
argued  nothing  at  all  but  the  weakness  of  a  genial 
nature  shrinking  from  the  instant  approach  of  torment. 
And  those  will  often  pity  that  weakness  most,  who,  ir 
theii  own  persons,  would  yield  to  it  least.  Meantime, 
there  never  was  a  calumny  uttered  that  drew  less  sujy 
port  from  the  recorded  circumstances.  It  rests  upon 
fco  positive  testimony,  and  it  has  a  weight  of  contrtr 


JOAX    OF    ABC.  211 

iicting  testimony  to  stem.  And  yet,  strange  to 
Bay,  M.  Michelet,  who  at  times  seems  to  admire  the 
Maid  of  Arc  as  much  as  I  do,  is  the  oi^p  sole  writer 
amongst  her  friends  who  lends  some  countenance  to 
this  odious  slander.  His  words  are,  that,  if  she  did 
not  utter  this  word  recant  with  her  lips,  she  uttered  it 
in  her  heart.  '  Whether  she  said  the  word  is  uncer- 
tain; but  I  affirm  that  she  thought  it.' 

Now,  I  affirm  that  she  did  not ;  not  in  any  sense  of 
the  word  '  thought '  applicable  to  the  case.  Here  \a 
France  calumniating  La  Pucelle  :  here  is  England  de- 
fending her.  M.  Michelet  can  only  mean  that,  on  d 
priori  principles,  every  woman  must  be  liable  to  such 
a  weakness  :  that  Joanna  was  a  woman ;  ergo,  that  she 
was  liable  to  such  a  weakness.  That  is,  he  only  sup- 
poses her  to  have  uttered  the  word  by  an  argument 
which  presumes  it  impossible  for  anybody  to  have  done 
otherwise.  I,  on  the  contrary,  throw  the  onus  of  the 
argument  not  on  presumable  tendencies  of  nature,  but 
on  the  known  facts  of  that  morning's  execution,  as  re- 
corded by  multitudes.  What  else,  I  demand,  than 
mere  weight  of  metal,  absolute  nobility  of  deportment, 
broke  the  vast  line  of  battle  then  arrayed  against  her  ? 
What  else  but  her  meek,  saintly  demeanor  won  from 
the  enemies,  that  till  now  had  believed  her  a  witch, 
tears  of  rapturous  admiration  ?  '  Ten  thousand  men,' 
says  M.  Michelet  himself,  '  ten  thousand  men  wept ; ' 
and  of  these  ten  thousarid  the  majority  were  political 
enemies  knitted  together  by  cords  of  superstition. 
What  else  was  it  but  her  constancy,  united  with  her 
a:igelic  gentleness,  that  drove  the  fanatic  English  sol- 
dier —  who  bad  sworn  to  throw  a  faggot  on  her  scaf* 
Wd,  as  his  tribute  of  abhorrence,  that  did  so,  that  ful- 


212  ^O/l^    of    ABC- 

filled  his  vow  —  suddenly  to  turn  away  a  penitent  foi 
life,  saying  everywhere  that  he  had  seen  a  dove  rising 
upon  wings  to  heaven  from  the  ashes  where  she  had 
stood  ?  What  else  drove  the  executioner  to  kneel  at 
every  shrine  for  pardon  to  his  share  in  the  tragedy  ! 
And  if  all  this  were  insufficient,  then  I  cite  the  closing 
act  of  her  life,  as  valid  on  her  behalf,  were  all  other 
testimonies  against  her.  The  executioner  had  been 
directed  to  apply  his  torch  from  below.  He  did  so. 
The  fiery  smoke  rose  upwards  in  billowing  volumes.  A 
Dominican  monk  was  then  standing  almost  at  her  side. 
Wrapped  up  in  his  sublime  office,  he  saw  not  the  dan- 
ger, but  still  persisted  in  his  prayers.  Even  then,  when 
the  last  enemy  was  racing  up  the  fiery  stairs  to  seize 
her,  even  at  that  moment  did  this  noblest  of  girls  think 
only  for  him,  the  one  friend  that  would  not  forsake  her, 
and  not  for  herself;  bidding  him  with  her  last  breath 
to  care  for  his  own  preservation,  but  to  leave  her  to  God. 
That  girl,  whose  latest  breath  ascended  in  this  sublime 
expression  of  self-oblivion,  did  not  utter  the  word  re- 
cant either  with  her  lips  or  in  her  heart.  No ;  she  did 
not,  though  one  should  rise  from  the  dead  to  swear  it. 

Bishop  of  Beauvais !  thy  victim  died  in  fire  upon  a 
scaffold  —  thou  upon  a  down  bed.  But  for  the  de- 
parting minutes  of  life,  both  are  oftentimes  alike.  At 
the  farewell  crisis,  when  the  gates  of  death  are  open- 
ing, and  flesh  is  resting  from  its  struggles,  oftentimes 
the  tortured  and  torturer  have  the  same  truce  from 
carnal  torment ;  both  sink  together  into  sleep ;  to« 
gether  both,  sometimes,  kindle  into  dreams.  Whe» 
the  mortal  mists  were  gathering  fast  upon  you  two. 
Irlshop  and  shepherd  girl —  when  the  pavilions  of  life 


JOAN    OF    AHC  213 

were  closing  up  their  shadowy  ciirtains  about  you  — 
et  U8  try,  through  the  gigantic  glooms,  to  decipher  the 
flying  features  of  your  separate  visions. 

The  shepherd  girl  that  had  delivered  France  —  she, 
from  her  dungeon,  she,  from  her  baiting  at  the  stake, 
she,  from  her  duel  with  fire,  as  she  entered  her  last 
dream  —  saw  Domremy,  saw  the  fountain  of  Domremy, 
saw  the  pomp  of  forests  in  which  her  childhood  had 
wandered.  That  Easter  festival,  which  man  had  de- 
nied to  her  languishing  heart  —  that  resurrection  of 
spring-time,  which  the  darkness  of  dungeons  had  in- 
tercepted from  her,  hungering  after  the  glorious  liberty 
of  forests  —  were  by  God  given  back  into  her  hands, 
as  jewels  that  had  been  stolen  from  her  by  robbers. 
With  those,  perhaps  (for  the  minutes  of  dreams  can 
stretch  into  ages),  was  given  back  to  her  by  God  the 
bliss  of  childhood.  By  special  privilege,  for  her  might 
be  created,  in  this  farewell  dream,  a  second  childhood, 
innocent  as  the  first ;  but  not,  like  that,  sad  with  the 
gloom  of  a  fearful  mission  in  the  rear.  The  mission 
had  now  been  fulfilled.  The  storm  was  weathered,  the 
skirts  even  of  that  mighty  storm  were  drawing  off. 
The  blood  that  she  was  to  reckon  for  had  been  ex- 
acted ;  the  tears  that  she  was  to  shed  in  secret  had 
been  paid  to  the  last.  The  hatred  to  herself  in  all 
eyes  had  been  faced  steadily,  had  been  suffered,  had 
been  survived.  And  in  her  last  fight  upon  the  scaffold 
she  had  triumphed  gloriously ;  victoriously  she  had 
tasted  the  stings  of  death.  For  all,  except  this  com- 
fort from  her  farewell  dream,  she  had  died  —  died, 
%midst  the  tears  of  ten  thousand  enemies  —  died, 
tmidst  the  drums  and  trumpets  of  armies  —  died, 
ftmidst  peals  redoubling  upon  peals,  volleys  upon  vol- 
leys, from  the  saluting  clarions  of  martyrs. 


214  JOAN    OF    ABC. 

Bishop  of  Beauvais !  because  the  guilt-burdenea 
man  is  in  dreams  haunted  and  waylaid  by  the  most 
frightful  of  his  crimes,  and  because  upon  that  fluctuat- 
ing mirror  —  rising  (like  the  mocking  mirrors  of  mirage 
in  Arabian  deserts)  from  the  fens  of  death  —  most  of 
all  are  reflected  the  sweet  countenances  which  the  man 
has  laid  in  ruins  ;  therefore  I  know,  bishop,  that  you 
also,  entering  your  final  dream,  saw  Domremy.  That 
fountain,  of  which  the  >vitnesses  spoke  so  much,  showed 
itself  to  your  eyes  in  pure  morning  dews :  but  neither 
dews,  nor  the  holy  dawn,  could  cleanse  away  the  bright 
spots  of  innocent  blood  upon  its  surface.  By  the  foun- 
tain, bishop,  you  saw  a  woman  seated,  that  hid  her 
face.  But  as  you  draw  near,  the  woman  raises  her 
wasted  features.  Would  Domremy  know  them  again 
for  the  features  of  her  child  ?  Ah,  but  you  know  them, 
bishop,well !  Oh,  mercy !  what  a  groan  was  that  which 
the  servants,  waiting  outside  the  bishop's  dream  at  hia 
bedside,  heard  from  his  laboring  heart,  as  at  this  mo- 
ment he  turned  away  from  the  fountain  and  the  woman, 
seeking  rest  in  the  forests  afar  ofi".  Yet  not  so  to 
escape  the  woman,  whom  once  again  he  must  behold  be- 
fore he  dies.  In  the  forests  to  which  he  prays  for  pity, 
will  he  find  a  respite  ?  What  a  tumult,  what  a  gath- 
ering of  feet  is  there  !  In  glades,  where  only  wiM 
deer  should  run,  armies  and  nations  are  assembling ; 
towering  in  the  fluctuating  crowd  are  phantoms  that 
belong  to  departed  hours.  There  is  the  great  English 
Prince,  Regent  of  France.  There  is  my  Lord  of  Win- 
chester, the  princely  cardinal,  that  died  and  made  no 
Bign.  There  is  the  Bishop  of  Beauvais,  clinging  to  the 
shelter  of  thickets.  What  building  is  that  which  hands 
10  rapid  are  raising  ?     Is  it  a  martyr's  scaffold  ?     WiL 


JOAN    OK    ARC.  215 

they  bum  the  child  of  Domremy  a  second  time  ?  No : 
it  is  a  tribunal  that  rises  to  the  clouds  ;  and  two  nations 
stand  around  it,  waiting  for  a  trial.  Shall  ray  Lord 
of  Beauvais  sit  again  upon  the  judgment-seat,  and 
again  number  the  hours  for  the  innocent  ?  Ah  !  no : 
he  is  the  prisoner  at  the  bar.  Already  all  is  waiting : 
the  mighty  audience  is  gathered,  the  Court  is  hurrying 
to  their  seats,  the  witnesses  are  arrayed,  the  trumpet* 
ai-e  sounding,  the  judge  is  taking  his  place.  Oh  !  but 
this  is  sudden.  My  lord,  have  you  no  counsel  ?  '  Coun- 
sel I  have  none  :  in  heaven  above,  or  on  earth  be- 
neath, counsellor  there  is  none  now  that  would  take  a 
brief  from  me  :  all  are  silent.'  Is  it,  indeed,  come  to 
this  ?  Alas  the  time  is  short,  the  tumult  is  wondrous, 
the  crowd  stretches  away  into  infinity,  but  yet  I  wUl 
search  in  it  for  somebody  to  take  your  brief :  I  know 
of  somebody  that  will  be  your  counsel.  Who  is  this, 
that  cometh  from  Domremy  ?  Who  is  she  in  bloody 
coronation  robes  from  Rheims  ?  Who  is  she  that 
Cometh  with  blackened  flesh  from  walking  the  fur- 
naces of  Rouen  ?  This  is  she,  the  shepherd  girl,  coun- 
sellor that  had  none  for  herself,  whom  I  choose,  bishop, 
for  yours.  She  it  is,  I  engage,  that  shall  take  mj 
lord's  brief.  She  it  is,  bishop,  that  would  plead  for 
you  :  yes,  bishop,  she  —  wnea  heaven  and  (iarth  are 
Bilent. 


THE  MARQUESS  WELLESLEY/ 

It  sounds  like  the  tolling  of  funeral  bells,  as  the 
annunciation  is  made  of  one  death  after  another 
amongst  those  who  supported  our  canopy  of  empire 
through  the  last  most  memorable  generation.  The 
eldest  of  the  Wellesleys  is  gone  :  he  is  gathered  to 
his  fathers ;  and  here  we  have  his  life  circumstantially 
written. 

Who,  and  of  what  origin  are  the  Wellesleys  ?  There 
is  an  impression  current  amongst  the  public,  or  there 
was  an  impression,  that  the  true  name  of  the  Wellesley 
family  is  Wesley.  This  is  a  case  very  much  resem- 
bling some  of  those  imagined  by  the  old  scholsistic 
logicians,  where  it  was  impossible  either  to  deny  or  to 
affirm :  saying  yes,  or  saying  no,  equally  you  told  a 
falsehood.  The  facts  are  these  :  the  family  was  origi- 
nally English ;  and  in  England,  at  the  earliest  era, 
there  is  no  doubt  at  all  that  its  name  was  De  Welles 
leigh,  which  was  pronounced  in  the  eldest  times  just  as 
it  is  now,  viz.  as  a  d issy liable, t  the  first  syllable 
Bounding   exactly   like   the   cathedral    city    Wells,   io 

*  Memoirs  and  Correspondence. 

t  '^s  a  dissyllable : '  — just  as  the  AnnesUy  family,  of  which 
Lord  Valentia  is  the  present  head,  do  not  pronounce  their  name 
Irisyllabically  (as  strangers  often  suppose),  but  as  the  two  syMtk 
ties  Ann*  ha,  accent  on  the  first 


THE    MARCiUESS    WELLESLEY.  217 

Somei'setshire,  and  the  second  like  Zea,  (a  field  lyLug 
fallow.)  It  is  plain  enough,  from  various  records,  that 
the  true  historical  genesis  of  the  name,  was  preoLsely 
through  that  composition  of  words,  which  here,  for  the 
moment,  I  had  imagined  merely  to  illustrate  its  pro- 
nunciation. Lands  in  the  diocese  of  Bath  and  Wells, 
lying  by  the  pleasant  river  Perret,  and  almost  up  to 
the  gates  of  Bristol,  constituted  the  earliest  possessions 
of  the  De  Wellesleighs.  They,  seven  centuries  before 
Assay,  and  Waterloo,  were  '  seised  '  of  certain  rich  letu 
belonging  to  Wells.  And  from  these  Seixon  elements 
of  the  name,  some  have  supposed  the  Wellesleys  a 
Saxon  race.  They  could  not  possibly  have  better 
blood :  but  still  the  thing  does  not  follow  from  the 
premises.  Neither  does  it  follow  from  the  de  that 
they  were  Norman.  The  first  De  Wellesley  known  to 
history,  the  very  tip-lop  man  of  the  pedigree,  is  Ave- 
nant  de  Wellesleigh.  About  a  hundred  years  nearer 
to  our  own  times,  viz.  in  1239,  came  Michael  de  Welles- 
leigh; of  whom  the  important  fact  is  recorded,  tha\ 
he  was  the  father  of  Wellerand  de  Wellesley.  And 
what  did  young  Mr.  Wellerand  perform  in  this  wicked 
world,  that  the  proud  muse  of  history  should  con- 
descend to  notice  his  rather  singular  name  ?  Reader, 
he  was  —  'killed:'  that  is  all;  and  in  company  wiin 
Sir  Robert  de  Percival ;  which  again  argues  his  Somer- 
setshire descent :  for  the  family  of  Lord  Egmont,  the 
head  of  all  Percivals,  ever  was,  and  ever  will  be,  in 
Somersetshire.  But  how  was  he  killed  ?  The  time 
*ohen,  viz.  1303,  the  place  where,  are  known  :  but  the 
manner  how,  is  not  exactly  stated ;  it  was  in  skirmisi 
with  rascally  Irish  '  kernes,'  fellows  that  (when  pre 
■entcd  at  the  font  of  Christ  for  baptism)  had  their  ng> 


218  THE    MARQUE-S    WELLESLEY. 

arma  covered  up  from  the  baptismal  waters,  in  order 
that,  still  remaining  consecrated  to  the  devil,  those 
arms  might  inflict  a  devilish  blow.  Such  a  blow,  with 
■uch  an  unbaptized  arm,  the  Irish  villain  struck ;  and 
there  was  an  end  of  Wellerand  de  Wellesleigh.  Strange 
that  history  should  make  an  end  of  a  man,  before  it 
had  made  a  beginning  of  him.  These,  however,  are 
the ^ac^s ;  which,  in  writing  a  romance  about  Sir  Wel- 
lerand and  Sir  Percival,  I  shall  have  great  pleasure  in 
falsifying.  But  how,  says  the  too  curious  reader,  did 
the  De  Wellesleighs  find  themselves  amongst  Irish 
kernes  ?  Had  these  scamps  the  presumption  to  invade 
Somersetshire  ?  Did  they  dare  to  intrude  into  Wells  ? 
Not  at  all :  but  the  pugnacious  De  Wellesleys  had 
dared  to  intrude  into  Ireland.  Some  say  in  the  train 
of  Henry  II.  Some  say  —  but  no  matter  :  there  they 
were  :  and  there  they  stuck  like  limpets.  They  soon 
engrafted  themselves  into  the  county  of  Kildare ;  from 
irhich,  by  means  of  a  fortunate  marriage,  they  leaped 
into  the  county  of  Meath ;  and  in  that  county,  as  if  to 
refute  the  pretended  mutability  of  human  things,  they 
have  roosted  ever  since.  There  was  once  a  famous 
copy  of  verses  floating  about  Europe,  which  asserted 
that,  whilst  other  princes  were  destined  to  fight  for 
thnmes,  Austria  —  the  handsome  house  of  Hapsburgh 
—  ihould  obtain  them  by  marriage  : 

•  Pugnabunt  alii :  tu,  felix  Austria,  nube."" 

So  of  the  Wellesleys :  Sir  Wellerand  took  quite  ihe 
nrrong  way  :  not  cudgelhng,  but  courting,  was  the  cor- 
rect way  for  succeeding  in  Kildare.  Two  great  estates 
by  two  separate  marriages,  the  De  Wellesleighs  ob- 
tained in  Kildare  ;  and,  by  a  third  marriage  in  a  thirfl 


THE    MARQUESS    WELLESLET.  219 

generation,  they  obtained  in  the  county  of  Meath, 
Castle  Dengan  (otherwise  Dangan)  with  lordships  as 
plentiful  as  blackberries.  Ceistle  Dangan  came  to 
them  in  the  year  of  our  Lord,  1411,  i.  e.  before  Agin- 
court :  and,  in  Castle  Dangan  did  Field-marshal,  the 
man  of  Waterloo,  draw  his  first  breath,  shed  his  first 
tears,  and  perpetrate  his  earliest  trespasses.  That  ia 
what  one  might  call  a  pretty  long  spell  for  one  family : 
four  hundred  and  thirty-five*  years  has  Castle  Dangan 
furnished  a  nursery  for  the  Wellesley  piccaninnies. 
Amongst  the  lordships  attached  to  Castle  Dangan  was 
Momington,  which  more  than  three  centuries  after- 
wards supplied  an  earldom  for  the  grandfather  of 
Waterloo.  Any  further  memorabilia  of  the  Castle 
Dangan  family  are  not  recorded,  except  that  in  1485 
(which  sure  was  the  year  of  Bosworth  field?)  they 
began  to  omit  the  de  and  to  write  themselves  Welles- 
ley  tout  court.  From  indolence,  I  presume  :  for  a 
certain  lady  Di.  le  Fl.,  whom  once  I  knew,  a  Howard 
by  birthj^^offchehouse  of  Suffolk,  told  me  as  her  reason 
for  omitting  the  Le,  that  it  caused  her  too  much  addi- 
tional trouble. 

So  far  the  evidence  seems  in  favor  of  Wellesley  and 
Sigainst  Wesley.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  during  the 
ast  three  centuries  the  Wellesleys  wrote  the  name 
Wesley.  They,  however,  were  only  the  maternal  an- 
v.€stors  of  the  present  Wellesleys.  Garret  Wellesley, 
the  last  male  heir  of  the  direct  line,  in  the  year  1745, 
left  his  whole-  estate  to  one  of  the  Cowleys,  a  StafFord- 
ihire  family  who  had  emigrated  to  Ireland  in  Queen 
Elizabeth's  time,  but  who  were,  however,  descended 
from  the  VVellesleys.  This  Cowley  or  Collej,  taking, 
ji  1745,  the  name  of  Wesley,  received  from  Georga 

»  Written  iu  184S 


^20  THE    MARQUESS    WELLESLET. 

D.  the  title  of  Earl  Morningtou :  and  CoUey's  grand  • 
■on,  the  Marquess  Wellesley  of  our  age,  was  recorded 
in  the  Irish  peerage  as  Wesley,  Earl  of  Mornington; 
was  uniformly  so  described  up  to  the  end  of  the  eigh> 
teenth  century ;  and  even  Arthur  of  Waterloo,  whom 
most  of  us  Europeans  know  pretty  well,  on  going  to 
India  a  little  before  his  brother,  was  thus  introduced  by 
Lord  Cornwallis  to  Sir  John  Shore  (Lord  Teignmouth, 
the  Grovernor-general),  '  Dear  sir,  I  beg  leave  to  intro- 
duce to  you  Colonel  Wesley,  who  is  a  lieutenant-colonel 
of  my  regiment.  He  is  a  sensible  man,  and  a  good 
officer.'  Posterity,  for  we  are  posterity  in  respect  of 
Lord  Cornwallis,  have  been  very  much  of  his  opinion. 
Colonel  Wesley  really  is  a  sensible  man ;  and  the 
sensible  man,  soon  after  his  arrival  in  Bengal, 
under  the  instigation  of  his  brother,  resumed  the  old 
name  of  Wellesley.  In  reality,  the  name  of  Wesley 
was  merely  the  abbreviation  of  indolence,  £is  Chumley 
-or  Cholmondeley,  Pomfret  for  Pontefract,  Cicester  for 
Cirencester ;  or,  in  Scotland,  Marchbanks  for  Majori- 
banks,  Chatorow  for  the  Duke  of  Hamilton's  French 
litle  of  Chatelherault.  I  remember  myself,  in  child- 
;.ood,  to  have  met  a  niece  of  John  Wesley  the  Proto- 
Methodist,  who  always  spoke  of  the  second  Lord 
Mornington  (author  of  the  well-known  glees)  as  a 
cousin,  and  as  intimately  connected  with  her  brother 
the  greaX  foudroyant  performer  on  the  organ.  Southey, 
m  his  Life  of  John  Wesley,  tells  us  that  Charles 
Wesley,  the  brother  of  John,  and  father  of  the  great 
organist,  had  the  offer  from  Garret  Wellesley  of  those 
same  estates  which  eventually  were  left  to  Richard 
Cowley.  This  argues  a  recognition  of  near  consan 
gumity.     Why  the  offer  was  declined,  is  not  distinctly 


THE  MARQUESS  WELLESLKY.  221 

explained.  But  if  it  had  been  accepted,  Sojthey 
thinks  that  then  we  should  have  had  no  storming  of 
Seringapatam,  no  Waterloo,  and  no  Arminiau  Metho- 
dists. All  that  is  not  quite  clear.  Tippoo  was  booked 
for  a  desperate  British  vengeance  by  his  own  desperate 
enmity  to  our  name,  though  no  Lord  Wellesley  had 
been  Governor-General.  Napoleon,  by  the  same  fury 
of  hatred  to  us,  was  booked  for  the  same  fate,  though 
the  scene  of  it  might  not  have  been  Waterloo.  And, 
as  to  John  Wesley,  why  should  he  not  have  made  the 
same  schism  with  the  English  Church,  because  his 
brother  Charles  had  become  unexpectedly  rich  ? 

The  Marquess  Wellesley  was  of  the  same  standing, 
as  to  age,  or  nearly  so,  as  Mr.  Pitt ;  though  he  outlived 
Pitt  by  almost  forty  years.  Born  in  1760,  three  or 
four  months  before  the  accession  of  George  III.,  he 
was  sent  to  Eton,  at  the  age  of  eleven  ;  and  from  Eton, 
in  his  eighteenth  year,  he  was  sent  to  Christ  Church, 
Oxford,  where  he  matriculated  as  a  nobleman.  He 
hen  bore  the  courtesy  title  of  Viscount  Wellesley  ;  but 
m  1781,  when  he  had  reached  his  twenty-first  year,  ho 
was  summoned  away  from  Oxford  by  the  death  of  his 
father,  the  second  Earl  of  Mornington,  It  is  interest' 
Ing,  at  this  moment,  to  look  back  on  the  family  group 
?f  children  collected  at  Dangan  Castle.  The  young 
earl  was  within  a  month  of  his  majority  :  his  younger 
brothers  and  sisters  were,  William  Wellesley  Pole 
(since  dead,  under  the  title  of  Lord  Maryborough), 
then  aged  eighteen ;  Anne,  since  married  to  Henry, 
ion  of  Lord  Southampton,  aged  thirteen  ;  Arthur^  aged 
welve ;  Gerald  Vai  Brian,  row  in  the  church,  aged 
»«»n ;  Mary  Elizabeth  (sinje  Lady  Culling  Smith),  aged 
aine  ;  Henry,  since  Lord  Cowley,  and  British  anibas- 


222  THE  MARQUESS  WELLESLET. 

sador  to  Spain,  France,  &c.  aged  eight.  The  new 
Lord  Mornington  showed  his  conscientious  nature,  by 
assuming  his  father's  debts,  and  by  superintending  the 
education  of  his  brothers.  He  had  distinguished  him- 
self at  Oxford  as  a  scholar ;  but  he  returned  thither  no 
more,  and  took  no  degree.  As  Earl  of  Mornington 
he  sat  in  the  Irish  House  of  Lords  •  but  not  being  a 
British  peer,  he  was  able  to  sit  also  in  the  English 
House  of  Commons ;  and  of  this  opening  for  a  more 
national  career,  he  availed  himself  at  the  age  of 
twenty-four.  Except  that  he  favored  the  claims  of  the 
Irish  Catholics,  his  policy  was  pretty  uniformly  that 
of  Mr.  Pitt.  He  supported  that  minister  throughout 
the  contests  on  the  French  Revolution ;  and  a  little 
earlier,  on  the  Regency  question.  This  came  forward 
in  1788,  on  occasion  of  the  first  insanity  which  attacked 
George  III.  The  reader,  who  is  likely  to  have  been 
born  since  that  era,  will  perhaps  not  be  acquainted 
with  the  constitutional  question  then  at  issue.  It  was 
.his :  Mr.  Fox  held  that,  upon  any  incapacity  arising 
in  the  sovereign,  the  regency  would  then  settle  {ipso 
facto  of  that  incapacity)  upon  the  Prince  of  Wales ; 
overlooking  altogether  the  case  in  which  there  should 
be  no  Prince  of  Wales,  and  the  case  in  which  such  a 
Prince  might  be  as  incapable,  from  youth,  of  exer- 
cising the  powers  attached  to  the  office,  ais  his  father 
iVom  disease.  Mr.  Pitt  denied  that  a  Prince  of  Wales 
simply  as  such,  and  apart  from  any  moral  fitness  whic^i 
he  might  possess,  had  more  title  to  the  office  of  regent 
than  any  lamp-lighter  or  scavenger.  It  was  the  prov- 
ince of  Parliament  exclusively  to  legislate  for  the  par- 
ticular  case.  The  practical  decision  of  the  question 
•raa  nrt  called   for,  from  the  accident  of  the  king^t 


THE    MARQUESS    WELLESLEY.  223 

ludden  recovery :  but  in  Ireland,  from  the  mdepen 
dence  asserted  by  the  two  houses  of  the  British  councils, 
the  question  grew  still  more  complex.  The  Lord 
Lieutenant  refused  to  transmit  their  address,*  and 
Lord  Mornington  supported  him  powerfully  m  his 
refusal. 

Ten  years  after  this  ho^  collision  of  parties,  Lord 
Mornington  was  appointed  Governor-General  of  India ; 
and  now  first  he  entered  upon  a  stage  worthy  of  his 
powers.  I  cannot  myself  agree  with  Mr.  Pearce,  that 
'  the  wisdom  of  his  policy  is  now  universally  recog- 
nized ; '  because  the  same  false  views  of  our  Indian 
position,  which  at  that  time  caused  his  splendid  ser- 
vices to  be  slighted  in  many  quarters,  still  prepon- 
derates. All  administrations  alike  have  been  intensely 
ignorant  of  Indian  politics  ;  and  for  the  natural  reason, 
that  the  business  of  home  politics  leaves  them  no  dis- 
posable energies  for  affairs  so  distant,  and  with  which 
each  man's  chance  of  any  durable  connection  is  so 
exceedingly  small.  What  Lord  Mornington  did  was 
this  :  he  looked  our  prospects  in  the  face.  Two  great 
enemies  were  then  looming  upon  the  horizon,  both 
ignorant  of  our  real  resources,  and  both  deluded  by 
our  imperfect  use  of  such  resources,  as,  even  in  a  pre- 
vious war,  we  had  possessed.  One  of  these  enemies 
was  Tippoo,  the  Sultan  of  Mysore  :  him,  by  the  crush- 
ing energy  of  his  arrangements.  Lord  Mornington  was 
able  utterly  to  destroy,  and  to  distribute  his  dominions 
with  equity  and  moderation,  yet  so  as  to  prevent  any 

*  Which  adopted  neither  view  ;  for  by  offering  the  regency  of 
Ireland  to  the  Prince  of  Wales,  they  negatived  Mr.  Fox's  view, 
who  held  it  to  be  the  Prince's  by  inherent  right ;  and,  on  tha 
»ther  hand,  they  still  more  openly  opposed  Mr.  Pitt 


B24  THE  MARQUESS  WELLESLET. 

new  coalition  arising  in  that  quarter  against  the  British 
power.  There  is  a  portrait  of  Tippoo,  of  this  very 
tiger,  in  the  second  volume  of  Mr.  Pearce's  work 
which  expresses  sufficiently  the  unparalleled  ferocity 
of  his  nature ;  and  it  is  guaranteed,  by  its  origin,  as 
authentic.  Tippoo,  from  the  personal  interest  investing 
him,  has  more  fixed  the  attention  of  Europe  than  a 
much  more  formidable  enemy :  that  enemy  was  the 
Mahratta  confederacy,  chiefly  existing  in  the  persons 
of  the  Peishwah,  of  Scindia,  of  Holkar,  and  the  Rajah 
of  Berar.  Had  these  four  princes  been  less  profoundly 
Ignorant,  had  they  been  less  inveterately  treacherous, 
they  would  have  cost  us  the  only^  dreadful  struggle 
which  in  India  we  have  stood.  As  it  was.  Lord  Morn- 
ington's  government  reduced  and  crippled  the  Mah- 
rattas  to  such  an  extent,  that  in  1817,  Lord  Hastings 
'bund  it  possible  to  crush  them  for  ever.  Three  ser- 
vices of  a  profounder  nature,  Lord  Wellesley  was 
enabled  to  do  for  India ;  first,  to  pave  the  way  for  the 
propagation  of  Christianity,  —  mighty  service,  stretch- 
ing to  the  clouds,  and  which,  in  the  hour  of  death, 
must  have  given  him  consolation;  secondly,  to  enter 
upon  the  abolition  of  such  Hindoo  superstitions  as  are 
most  shocking  to  humanity,  particularly  the  practice 
>f  Suttee,  and  the  barbarous  exposure  of  dying  per- 
sons, or  af  first-born  infants  at  Sangor  on  the  Ganges ; 
finally,  to  promote  an  enlarged  system  of  education, 
which  (if  his  splendid  scheme  had  been  adopted)  would 
have  diffused  its  benefits  all  over  India.  It  ought  also 
to  be  mentioned  that  the  expedition  by  way  of  the  Red 
Sea  against  the  French  in  Egypt,  was  so  entirely  of 
his  suggestion  and  his  preparation,  that,  to  the  grea 
dishonor  of  Messrs.  Pitt  and  Dundas,  whose  adminis 


THE    MARQUESS    WELLESLET.  22ft 

iratioD  was  the  worst,  as  a  war  administration,  that 
ever  misapplied,  or  non-applied,  the  resources  of  a 
mighty  empire,  it  languished  for  eighteen  months 
purely  through  their  neglect. 

In  1805,  having  staid  about  seven  years  in  India, 
Lord  Mornington  was  recalled,  was  created  Marquess 
of  Wellesley,  was  sent,  in  1821,  as  Viceroy  to  Ireland, 
where  there  was  little  to  do ;  having  previously,  in 
1809,  been  sent  Ambassador  to  the  Spanish  Cortes, 
where  there  was  an  affinity  to  do,  but  no  means  of 
doing  it.  The  last  great  political  act  of  Lord  Welles- 
ley,  was  the  smashing  of  the  Peel  ministry  in  1834 ; 
viz.  by  the  famous  resolution  (which  he  personally 
drew  up)  for  appropriating  to  general  education  in 
Ireland  any  surplus  arising  from  the  revenues  of  the 
Irish  Church.  Full  of  honors,  he  retired  from  public 
life  at  the  age  of  seventy-five,  and,  for  seven  years 
more  of  life,  dedicated  his  time  to  such  literary  pur- 
juits  as  he  had  found  most  interesting  in  early  youth. 

Mr.  Pearce,  who  is  so  capable  of  writing  vigorously 
and  sagaciously,  has  too  much  allowed  himself  to  rely 
upon  public  journals.  For  example,  he  reprints  the 
whole  of  the  attorney-general's  official  iflformation 
against  eleven  obscure  persons,  who,  from  the  gallery 
of  the  Dubhn  theatre,  did  '  wickedly,  riotously,  and 
routously  '*'  hiss,  groan,  insult,  and  assault  (to  say 
nothing  of  their  having  caused  and  procured  to  be 
hissed,  groaned,  &c.)  the  Marquess  Wellesley,  Lord- 
Lieutenant  General,  and  General  Governor  of  Ireland. 
This  document  covers  more  than  nine  pages ,  jmd. 
after  all,  omits  the  only  fact  of  the  least  consequence 
riz.,  that  several  missiles  were  thrown  by  the  rioters 
nto  the  vice -regal  box,  and  amongst  them  a  quart 
15 


226  THE    MARQUESS    WELLESLEY. 

bottle,  which  barely  missed  his  excellency  s  temples. 
Considering  the  impetus  acquired  by  the  descent  from 
the  gallery,  there  is  little  doubt  that  such  a  weapon 
would  have  killed  Lord  Wellesley  on  the  spot.  In  de- 
fault however,  of  this  weighty  fact,  the  attorney -general 
favors  us  with  memorializing  the  very  best  piece  of 
doggerel  that  I  remember  to  have  read  ;  viz.,  that  upon 
divers,  to  wit,  three  thousand  papers,  the  rioters  had 
wickedly  and  maliciously  written  and  printed,  besides, 
observe,  causing  to  be  written  and  printed,  *  No 
Popery,'  eis  also  the  following  traitorous  couplet  — 

•  The  Protestants  want  Talbot, 
As  the  Papists  have  got  all  but ; ' 

Meaning  'all  but'  that  which  they  got  some  yeara 
later  by  means  of  the  Clare  election.  Yet  if,  in  some 
instances  like  this,  Mr.  Pearce  h£is  too  largely  drawn 
upon  oflScial  papers,  which  he  should  rather  have  ab- 
stracted and  condensed,  on  the  other  hand,  his  work 
has  a  specific  value  in  bringing  forward  private  docu- 
ments, to  which  his  opportunities  have  gained  him 
a  confidential  access.  Two  portraits  of  Lord  Welles- 
ley,  one  in  middle  life,  and  one  in  old  age,  from 
a  sketch  by  the  Comte  d'Orsay,  are  felicitously  exe- 
cuted. 

Something  remains  to  be  said  of  Lord  Wellesley  as  a 
literary  man ;  and  towards  such  a  judgment  Mr.  Pearce 
has  contri'Duted  some  very  pleasing  materials.  As  a 
public  speaker.  Lord  Wellesley  had  that  degree  of 
Orilliancy  and  effectual  vigor,  which  might  have  been 
expected  in  a  man  of  great  talents,  possessing  much 
oative  sensibility  to  the  charms  of  style,  but  not  led  by 
any  personal  accidents  of  life  into  a  separate  cultiva- 


THE  MARQUESS  WELLESLEY.  227 

ration  of  oratory,  or  into  any  profound  investi gallon 
of  its  duties  and  its  powers  on  the  arena  of  a  British 
Benato.  There  is  less  call  for  speaking  of  Lord  Welles- 
ley  in  this  character,  where  he  did  not  seek  for  any 
eminent  distinction,  than  jn  the  more  general  character 
of  an  elegant  litterateur,  which  furnished  to  him  muci. 
of  his  recreation  in  all  stages  of  his  life,  and  much  of 
his  consolation  in  the  last.  It  is  interesting  to  see  this 
accomplished  nobleman,  in  advanced  age,  when  other 
resources  were  one  by  one  decaying,  and  the  lights  of 
life  were  successively  fading  into  darkness,  still  cheer- 
ing his  languid  hours  by  the  culture  of  cleissical  litera- 
ture, and  in  his  eighty-second  year  drawing  solace 
from  those  same  pursuits  which  had  given  grace  and 
distinction  to  his  twentieth. 

One  or  two  remarks  I  will  make  upon  Lord  Welles- 
ley's  verses  —  Greek  as  well  as  Latin.  The  Latin 
lines  upon  Chantrey's  success  at  Holkham  in  killing 
two  woodcocks  at  the  first  shot,  which  subsequently  he 
sculptured  in  marble  and  presented  to  Lord  Leicester, 
are  perhaps  the  most  felicitous  amongst  the  whole. 
Masquerading,  in  Lord  Wellesley's  verses,  as  Praxi- 
teles, who  could  not  well  be  represented  with  a  Manon 
having  a  percussion  lock,  Chantrey  is  armed  with  a 
bow  and  arrows : 

•  En  !  txajecit  aves  una  sagitta  duas.' 

In  the  Greek  translation  of  Parthenopaeus,  there  are  as 
few  faults  as  could  reasonably  be  expected.  But,  first, 
»ne  word  as  to  the  original  Latin  poem  :  to  whom  does 
1  belong?  It  is  traced  first  to  Lord  Grenville,  who 
eceived  it  from  his  tutor  (afterwards  Bishop  of  Lon* 
^n),  who  had  taken  it  as  an  anonymous  poem  from 


228         THE  MARQUESS  WKLLESLET. 

the* Censor's  book;'  and  with  very  little  probability 
it  is  doubtfully  assigned  to  '  Lewis  of  the  War  Office, 
meaning,  no  doubt,  the  father  of  Monk  Lewis.  By  this 
anxiety  in  tracing  its  pedigree,  the  reader  is  led  to  ex- 
aggerate the  pretensions  of  the  little  poem ;  these  are 
inconsiderable  :  and  there  is  a  conspicuous  fault,  which 
it  is  worth  while  noticing,  because  it  is  one  peculiarly 
besetting  those  who  write  modern  verses  with  the  help 
of  a  gradus,  viz.  that  the  Pentameter  is  often  a  mere 
reverberation  of  the  preceding  Hexameter.  Thus,  for 
instance  — 

*  Parthenios  inter  saltus  non  amplius  erro, 
Non  repeto  Dryadum  pascua  Iseta  choris  ; ' 

iind  so  of  others,  where  the  second  line  is  but  a  varia- 
tion of  the  first.  Even  Ovid,  with  all  his  fertility,  and 
partly  in  consequence  of  his  fertility,  too  often  commits 
this  fault.  Where  indeed  the  thought  is  effectually 
varied,  so  that  the  second  line  acts  as  a  musical  minor^ 
succeeding  to  the  major.,  in  the  first,  there  may  happen 
to  arise  a  peculiar  beauty.  But  I  speak  of  the  ordinary 
case,  where  the  second  is  merely  the  rebouna  of  the 
first,  presenting  the  same  thought  m  a  diluted  form. 
This  is  the  commonest  resource  of  feeble  thinking,  and 
is  also  a  standing  temptation  or  snare  for  feeble  think- 
.ng.  Lord  Wellesley,  however,  is  not  answerable  foi 
these  faults  in  the  original,  which  indeed  he  notices 
slightly  as  '  repetitions  ; '  and  his  own  Greek  version  ji 
spirited  and  good.  There,  are,  however,  some  mistakes. 
The  second  line  is  altogether  faulty ; 

XuiQia  MaivaXioa  narr*  igartiva  6§fo 
*  A.^vvfiivot  Xnnatv 

loe«  not  express  the  sense  intended.     Construed  cot 


THE    MARQUESS    WELLESLEY.  229 

fecty.  this  clause  of  the  sentence  would  mean  —  '2 
torrowfully  leaning  all  places  gracious  to  the  Mcena- 
lian  god : '  but  that  is  not  what  Lord  Wellesley  de- 
signed :  '  I  leaving  the  woods  of  Cyllene^  and  the 
snowy  summits  of  Pholoe,  places  that  are  all  of  them 
dear  to  Pan '  —  that  is  what  was  meant :  that  is  to 
say,  not  leaving  all  places  dear  to  Pan,  far  from  it ; 
but  leaving  a  few  places,  every  one  of  which  is  dear  to 
Pan.     In  the  line  beginning 

Kav  i6  iJ(p'    i,Xtxtag 

where  the  meaning  is  —  and  if  as  yet,  hy  reason  of  my 
immature  age,  there  is  a  metrical  error ;  and  ijAixia  will 
not  express  immaturity  of  age.  1  doubt  whether  in  the 
next  line, 

Afij()*  aXxi]  daHot  yovraatv   t]idcos 

yovvaaiv  could  convey  the  meaning  without  the  preposi-i 
tion  i*.     And  in 

I  hasten  whither  the  gods  summon  me  —  <^  is  not  the 
right  word.  It  is,  however,  almost  impossible  to  write 
Greek  verses  which  shall  be  liable  to  no  verbal  objec- 
tions ;  and  the  fluent  movement  of  these  verses  suf- 
ficiently argues  the  oflf-hand  ease  with  which  Lord 
Wellesley  must  have  read  Greek,  writing  it  so  ele- 
gantly and  with  so  little  of  apparent  constraint. 

Meantime  the  most  interesting  (from  its  circum- 
stances) of  Lord  Wellesley's  verses,  is  one  to  which 
his  own  English  interpretation  of  it  has  done  less  than 
justice.  It  is  a  Latin  epitaph  on  the  daughter  (an  only 
child)  of  Lord  and  I>ady  Brougham,  She  died,  and 
(as  was  generally  known  at  the  time)  of  an  organic 
affection  disturbing  tae  action  of  the  neart,  at  the  early 


880  THK    MARQUESS    WELLESLET. 

age  of  eighteen.  And  the  peculiar  interest  of  the  case 
lies  in  the  suppression  by  this  pious  daughter  (so  fai 
BU9  it  was  possible)  of  her  own  bodily  anguish,  in  ordei 
to  beguile  the  mental  anguish  of  her  parents.  The 
Ijatin  epitaph  is  this  : 

♦  Blanda  anima,  e  cunis  heu  !  longo  exeroita  morbo. 
Inter  maternas  heu  lachrymasque  patris, 

Quas  risu  lenire  tuo  jucunda  soletas, 
Et  levis,  et  proprii  vix  memor  ipsa  mali ; 

I,  pete  calestes,  ubi  nulla  est  cura,  recessus 
Et  tibi  sit  nullo  mista  dolore  quies  ! ' 

The  English  version  is  this : 

•  Doont'd  to  long  suffering  from  earliest  years. 
Amidst  your  parents'  grief  and  pain  alone 

Cheerful  and  gay,  you  smiled  to  soothe  their  team 
And  in  their  agonies  forgot  your  own. 

Oo,  gentle  spirit ;  and  among  the  blest 
From  grief  and  pain  eternal  be  thy  rest ! ' 

in  the  Latin,  the  phrase  e  cunis  does  not  express 
from  your  cradle  upwards.  The  second  line  is  faulty 
in  the  opposition  of  maternas  to  patris.  And  in  the 
fourth  line  levis  conveys  a  false  meaning :  levts  must 
mean  either  physically  light,  i.  e.  not  heavy,  which  is 
not  the  sense,  or  else  tainted  with  levity,  which  is  still 
less  the  sense.  What  Lord  Wellesley  wished  to  say  — 
was  light-hearted :  this  he  has  not  said  :  but  neither  is 
it  easy  to  say  it  in  good  Latin. 

I  complain,  however,  of  the  whole  as  not  bringing 
out  Lord  Weslesley's  own  feeling  —  which  feeling  is 
partly  expressed  in  his  verses,  and  partly  in  his  accom- 
panying prose  note  on  Miss  Brougham's  mournful 
destiny  ('  her  life  was  a  continual  illness ')  contrasted 
with  her  fortitude,  her  inoocent  gaiety,  and  the  pious 
•nctives  with  which  she  supported  this  gaiety  to  th« 


THE    MARVoJUKSS    WELLESLEY.  231 

ast  Not  as  a  direct  version,  but  as  filling  up  the  out- 
line of  Lord  Wellesley,  sufficiently  ^indicated  by  him- 
self, I  propose  this :  — 

'  Child,  that  for  thirteen  *  years  hast  fought  with  pain, 

Prompted  by  joy  and  depth  of  natural  love,  — 
Rest  now  at  God's  command  :  oh  !  not  in  vain 

His  angel  ofttimes  watch'd  thee,  —  oft,  above 
All  pangs,  that  else  had  dimm'd  thy  parents'  eyes. 
Saw  thy  young  heart  victoriously  rise. 
Rise  now  fcr  ever,  self-forgetting  child, 

Rise  to  those  choirs,  where  love  like  thine  is  blest. 
From  pains  of  flesh  —  from  filial  tears  assoil'd. 
Love  which  God's  hand  shall  crown  with  God's  own  resU 

•  "  For  thirteen,"  i.  e.,  from  the  nge  of  five  to  eighteen,  M 
which  age  she  died. 


CHARLES   LAMB. 

It  sounds  paradoxical,  but  is  not  so  in  a  bad  sepse, 
to  say  that  in  every  literature  of  large  compass  some 
authors  will  be  found  to  rest  much  of  the  interest 
which  surrounds  them  on  their  essential  non-popularit)'. 
They  are  good  for  the  very  reason  that  tiiey  are  not  in 
conformity  to  the  current  taste.  They  interest  be- 
cause to  the  world  they  are  not  interesting.  They 
attract  by  means  of  their  repulsion.  Not  as  though  it 
could  separately  furnish  a  reason  for  lovmg  a  book, 
that  the  majority  of  men  had  found  it  repulsive.  Primd 
facie,  it  must  suggest  some  presumption  against  a 
book,  that  it  has  failed  to  gain  public  attention.  To 
have  roused  hostility  indeed,  to  have  kindled  a  feud 
against  its  own  principles  or  its  temper,  may  happen 
to  be  a  good  sign.  That  argues  power.  Hatred  may 
oe  promising.  The  deepest  revolutions  of  mind 
•ometimes  begin  in  hatred.  But  simply  to  have  left 
a  reader  unimpressed,  is  in  itself  a  neutral  result,  from 
ivhich  the  inference  is  doubtful.  Yet  even  that,  even 
simple  failure  to  impress,  may  happen  at  times  to  be  a 
result  from  positive  powers  in  a  writer,  from  special 
originalities,  such  as  rarely  reflect  themselves  in  the 
mirror  of  the  ordinary  understanding.  It  seems  little 
-o  be  pe«^eived,  how  much  the  great  scriptural**  idea 


CHAKLES    LAMB.  283 

*f  the  worldly  and  the  unworldly  is  found  to  emerge  in 
literature  as  well  as  in  life.  In  reality  the  very  same 
combinations  of  moral  qualities,  infinitely  varied,  which 
compose  the  harsh  physiognomy  of  what  we  call  world- 
liness  in  the  living  groups  of  life,  must  unavoidably 
present  themselves  in  books.  A  library  divides  into 
sections  of  worldly  and  unworldly,  even  as  a  crowd  of 
men  divides  into  that  same  majority  and  minority.  The 
world  has  an  instinct  for  recognizing  its  own  ;  and  re- 
coils from  certain  qualities  when  exemplified  in  books, 
with  the  same  disgust  or  defective  sympathy  as  would 
have  governed  it  in  real  life.  From  qualities  for  instance 
of  childlike  simplicity,  of  shy  profundity,  or  of  inspired 
self-communion,  the  world  does  and  must  turn  away 
its  face  towards  grosser,  bolder,  more  determined,  or 
more  intelligible  expressions  of  character  and  intellect ; 
and  not  otherwise  in  literature,  nor  at  all  less  in  litera- 
ture, than  it  does  in  the  realities  of  life. 

Charles  Lamb,  if  any  ever  was,  is  amongst  the  class 
here  contemplated  ;  he,  if  ever  any  has,  ranks  amongst 
writers  whose  works  are  destined  to  be  for  ever  unpopu- 
lar, and  yet  for  ever  interesting  ;  interesting,  moreover, 
by  means  of  those  very  qualities  which  guarantee  their 
non-popularity.  The  same  qualities  which  will  be 
.'ound  forbidding  to  the  worldly  and  the  thoughtless, 
which  will  be  found  insipid  to  many  even  amongst 
'obust  and  powerful  minds,  are  exactly  those  which  will 
wontinue  to  command  a  select  audience  in  every  gene- 
ration. The  prose  essays,  under  the  signature  of  Elia, 
form  the  most  delightful  section  amongst  Lamb's  works. 
They  traverse  a  peculiar  field  of  observation,  seques- 
tered from  general  interest ;  and  they  are  composed  iu 
k  spirit  too  delicate  and  unobtrusive  to  catch  the  ear  o1 


234  CHARLES    LAMB. 

the  noisy  crowd,  clamoring  for  strong  sensations.  But 
this  retiring  delicacy  itself,  tbe  pensiveness  chequered 
by  gleams  of  the  fanciful,  and  the  humor  that  is  touched 
with  cross-lights  of  pathos,  together  with  the  picturesque 
nuaintness  of  the  objects  casually  described,  whether 
men,  or  things,  or  usages,  and,  in  the  rear  of  all  this, 
the  constant  recurrence  to  ancient  recollections  and  to 
decaying  forms  of  household  life,  as  things  retiring  be- 
fore the  tumult  of  new  and  revolutionary  generations ; 
these  traits  in  combination  communicate  to  the  papers 
a  grace  and  strength  of  originality  which  nothing  in 
any  literature  approaches,  whether  for  degree  or  kind 
of  excellence,  except  the  most  felicitous  papers  of 
Addison,  such  as  those  on  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  and 
some  others  in  the  same  vein  of  composition.  They 
resemble  Addison's  papers  also  in  the  diction,  which  is 
natural  and  idiomatic,  even  to  carelessness.  They  are 
equally  faithful  to  the  truth  of  nature ;  and  in  this 
only  they  differ  remarkably  —  that  the  sketches  of  Elia 
reflect  the  stamp  and  impress  of  the  writer's  own  char- 
acter, whereas  in  all  those  of  Addison  the  personal 
peculiarities  of  the  delineator  (though  known  to  the 
reader  from  the  beginning  through  the  account  of  the 
club)  are  nearly  quiescent.  Now  and  then  they  are 
recalled  into  a  momentary  notice,  but  they  do  not  act, 
or  at  all  modify  his  pictures  of  Sir  Roger  or  Will 
Wimble.  They  are  slightly  and  amiably  eccentric  ;  but 
the  Spectator  himself,  in  describing  them,  take?  the 
station  of  an  ordinary  observer. 

Everywhere,  indeed,  in  the  writings  of  Lamb,  and 
not  merely  in  his  Elia,  the  character  of  the  writer 
tooporates  in  an  undercurrent  to  the  effect  of  the  thing 
written.     To  understand  in  the  fullest  sense  either  tli« 


CHABLES    LAMB.  235 

i^ayely  oi  the  tenderness  of  a  particular  passage,  you 
must  have  some  insight  into  the  peculiar  bias  of  the 
writer's  mind,  whether  native  and  original,  or  impressed 
gradually  by  the  accidents  of  situation  ;  whether  simply 
developed  out  of  predispositions  by  the  action  of  life,  or 
violently  scorched  into  the  constitution  by  some  fierce 
fever  of  calamity.  There  is  in  modern  literature  a 
whole  class  of  writers,  though  not  a  large  one,  standing 
within  the  same  category ;  some  marked  originality  of 
character  in  the  writer  becomes  a  coefficient  with  what 
he  says  to  a  common  result ;  you  must  sympathize  with 
this  personality  in  the  author  before  you  can  appre- 
ciate the  most  significant  parts  of  his  views.  In  most 
books  the  writer  figures  as  a  mere  abstraction,  without 
Bex  or  age  or  local  station,  whom  the  reader  banishes 
from  his  thoughts.  What  is  written  seems  to  proceed 
from  a  blank  intellect,  not  from  a  man  clothed  with 
fleshly  peculiarities  and  difierences.  These  peculiari- 
ties and  differences  neither  do,  nor  (generally  speaking) 
could  intermingle  with  the  texture  of  the  '■houghts  so 
as  to  modify  their  force  or  their  direction.  In  such 
books,  and  they  form  the  vast  majority,  there  is  noth- 
ing to  be  found  or  to  be  looked  for  beyond  the  direct 
objective.  {Sit  venia  verbo  !)  But,  in  a  small  section 
of  books,  the  objective  in  the  thought  becomes  conflu- 
ent with  the  subjective  in  the  thinker —  the  two  forces 
unite  for  a  joint  product ;  and  fully  to  enjoy  the  pro- 
duct, or  fully  to  apprehend  either  element,  both  must 
be  known.  It  is  singular,  and  worth  inquiring  into,  for 
the  reason  that  the  Greek  and  Roman  literature  had  no 
luch  books.  Timon  of  Athens,  or  Diogenes,  one  may 
conceive  qualified  fo"  this  mode  of  authorship,  had 
.cumalism  existed  to  rouse  them  in  those  days  ;   theii 


236  CHABLE8    I.UMB. 

'  articles  '  would  no  doubt  have  been  fearfully  caustic 
But,  as  they  failed  to  produce  anything,  and  Lucian  in 
an  after  age  is  scarcely  characteristic  enough  for  the 
purpose,  perhaps  we  may  pronounce  Rabelais  and 
Montaigne  the  earliest  of  writers  in  the  class  described. 
In  the  century  following  theirs,  came  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  and  immediately  after  him  La  Fontaine.  Then 
come  Swift,  Sterne,  with  others  less  distinguished  ;  in 
Germany,  Hippel,  the  friend  of  Kant,  Harmann,  the 
obscure  ;  and  the  greatest  of  the  whole  body  —  John 
Paul  Fr.  Richter.  In  him,  from  the  strength  and  de- 
terminateness  of  his  nature  as  well  as  from  the  great 
extent  of  his  writing,  the  philosophy  of  this  interaction 
between  the  author  as  a  human  agency  and  his  theme 
as  an  intellectual  reagency,  might  best  be  studied. 
From  him  might  be  derived  the  largest  number  of  cases 
illustrating  boldly  his  absorption  of  the  universal  into 
the  concrete  —  of  the  pure  intellect  into  the  human 
nature  of  the  author.  But  nowhere  could  illustrations 
be  found  more  interesting  —  shy,  delicate,  evanescent  — 
shy  as  lightning,  delicate  and  evanescent  as  the  colored 
pencillings  on  a  frosty  night  from  the  northern  lights, 
than  in  the  better  parts  of  Lamb. 

To  appreciate  Lamb,  therefore,  it  is  requisite  that 
his  character  and  temperament  should  be  understood 
in  their  coyest  and  most  wayward  features.  A  capital 
defect  it  would  be  if  these  could  not  be  gathered  silentW 
from  Lamb's  works  themselves.  It  would  be  a  fatal 
mode  of  dependency  upon  an  alien  and  separable  acci- 
dent if  they  needed  an  external  commentary.  But 
they  do  not.  The  syllables  lurk  up  and  down  the 
writings  of  Lamb  which  decipher  his  eccentric  nature. 
His  character  lies  there  dispeised  in  anagram ;  and  to 


OHJiJKIiJSS    LAMB.  237 

»ny  attentive  reader  the  regathering  and  restoration  oi 
the  total  word  from  its  scattered  parts  is  inevitable 
«rithout  an  effort.  Still  it  is  always  a  satisfaction  in 
knowing  a  result,  to  know  also  its  why  and  how  ;  and 
in  so  far  as  every  character  is  likely  to  be  modified  by 
the  particular  experience,  sad  or  joyous,  through  wL  eh 
the  life  has  travelled,  it  is  a  good  contribution  towards 
the  knowledge  of  that  resulting  character  as  a  whole 
to  have  a  sketch  of  that  particular  experience.  What 
tiials  did  it  impose  ?  What  energies  did  it  task  ?  Whaf 
temptations  did  it  unfold  ?  These  calls  upon  the  moral 
powers,  which,  in  music  so  stormy,  many  a  life  is 
doomed  to  hear,  how  were  they  faced  ?  The  character 
in  a  capital  degree  moulds  oftentimes  the  life,  but  the 
life  always  in  a  subordinate  degiee  moulds  the  charac- 
ter. And  the  character  being  in  this  case  of  Lamb  so 
much  of  a  key  to  the  writings,  it  becomes  important 
that  the  life  should  be  traced,  however  briefly,  as  a 
key  to  the  character. 

That  is  one  reason  for  detaining  the  reader  with 
some  slight  record  of  Lamb's  career.  Such  a  record 
by  preference  and  of  right  belongs  to  a  case  where  the 
intellectual  display,  which  is  the  sole  ground  of  any 
public  interest  at  all  in  the  man,  has  been  intensely 
modified  by  the  humanities  and  moral  personalities 
distinguishing  the  subject.  We  read  a  Physiology,  and 
need  no  information  as  to  the  life  and  conversation  of 
its  author ;  a  meditative  poem  becomes  far  better  un- 
ierstood  by  the  light  of  such  information  ;  but  a  work 
of  genial  and  at  the  same  time  eccentric  sentiment, 
wandering  upon  untrodden  pahs,  is  barely  intelligible 
without  it.  There  is  a  good  reason  for  arresting  judg- 
nent  on  the  writer,  that  the  court  may  receive  evidence 


238  CHABLES    LAMB. 

3n  the  life  of  the  man.  But  there  is  another  reason, 
fcnd,  in  any  other  place,  a  better ;  which  reason  lies  in 
the  extraordinary  value  of  the  life  considered  separately 
for  itself.  Logically,  it  is  not  allowable  to  say  that 
here ;  and  considering  the  principal  purpose  of  thia 
paper,  any  possible  independent  value  of  the  life  mu.st 
rank  as  a  better  reason  for  reporting  it.  Since,  in  a 
case  where  the  original  object  is  professedly  to  esti- 
mate the  writings  of  a  man,  whatever  promises  to 
further  that  object  must,  merely  by  that  tendency, 
have,  in  relation  to  that  place,  a  momentary  advantage 
which  it  would  lose  if  valued  upon  a  more  abstract 
scale.  Liberated  from  this  casual  office  of  throwing 
light  upon  a  book  —  raised  to  its  grander  station  of  a 
solemn  deposition  to  the  moral  capacities  of  man  in 
conflict  with  calamity  —  viewed  as  a  return  made  into 
the  chanceries  of  heaven  —  upon  an  issue  directed 
from  that  court  to  try  the  amount  of  power  lodged  in 
a  poor  desolate  pair  of  human  creatures  for  facing  the 
very  anarchy  of  storms  —  this  obscure  life  of  the  two 
Lambs,  brother  and  sister,  (for  the  two  lives  were  one 
life,)  rises  into  a  grandeur  that  is  not  paralleled  once 
in  a  generation. 

Rich,  indeed,  in  moral  instruction  was  the  life  of 
Charles  Lamb  ;  and  perhaps  in  one  chief  result  it  ofiers 
to  the  thoughtful  observer  a  lesson  of  consolation  that 
is  awful,  and  of  hope  that  ought  to  be  immortal,  viz., 
in  the  record  which  it  furnishes,  that  by  meekness  of 
submission,  and  by  earnest  conflict  with  evil,  in  the 
spirit  of  cheerfulness  it  is  possible  ultimately  to  disarm 
or  to  blunt  the  very  heaviest  of  curses  —  even  the 
eurse  of  lunacy.  Had  it  been  whispered,  in  hours  of 
nfancy,  to    Lamb,  by  the  angel  who   stood   by  hii 


CHABLE3    XAMB.  239 

cradle  —  '  Thou,  and  the  sister  that  walks  by  ten  years 
Defore  thee,  shall  be  through  life,  each  to  each,  the 
lolitary  fountain  of  comfort ;  and  except  it  be  from 
this  fountain  of  mutual  love,  except  it  be  as  brother 
and  sister,  ye  shall  not  taste  the  cup  of  peace  on 
earth  ! '  —  here.  If  there  was  sorrow  in  reversion,  there 
was  also  consolation. 

But  what  funeral  swamps  would  have  instantly  in- 
gulfed this  consolation,  had  some  meddling  fiend  pro- 
longed the  revelation,  and,  holding  up  the  curtain  from 
the  sad  feature  a  little  longer,  had  said  scornfully  — 
'  Peace  on   earth !    Peace   for  you  two,   Charles  and 
Mary  Lamb  !     What  peace  is  possible  under  the  curse 
which  even  now  is  gathering  against  your  heads  ?     Is 
there  peace  on  earth  for  the  lunatic  —  peace   for  the 
parenticide  —  peace  for  the  girl  that,  without  warning, 
and   without   time    granted    for  a  penitential    cry   to 
Heaven,  sends  her  mother  to   the   last  audit?     And 
then,    without   treachery,    speaking    bare    truth,    this 
prophet    of    woe    might    have    added  — '  Thou,    also, 
thyself,    Charles   Lamb,    thou  in    thy  proper   person, 
shalt  enter  the  skirts  of  this  dreadful  hail-storm  ;  even 
thou  shalt  taste  the  secrets  of  lunacy,  and  enter  as  a 
captive  its  house  of   bondage  ;  whilst  over  thy  sister 
the  accursed  scorpion  shall  hang  suspended   through 
life,  like  death  hanging  over  the  beds  of  hospitals, 
striking  at  times,  but  more  often  threatening  to  strike  : 
or  withdrawing  its  instant  menaces  only  to  lay  bare 
her  mind  more  bitterly  to  the  persecutions  of  a  haunted 
memory  ! '     Considering  the  nature  of  the  calamity,  in 
he  first  place ;   considering,  in  the  second  place,  its 
B^'elcng  duration  ;  and,  in  the  last  place,  considering 
\he  quality  of  the  resistance  by  whi?h  it  was  met,  and 


^40  CHAS1,£8    liAMB. 

onder  wLat  circumstances  of  humble  resources  ;n 
money  or  friends  —  we  have  come  to  the  deliberate 
judgment,  that  the  whole  range  of  history  scarcely 
presents  a  more  affecting  spectacle  of  perpetual  sorrow 
humiliation,  or  conflict,  and  that  was  supported  to  thft 
end,  (that  is,  through  forty  years,)  with  more  'resigna- 
tion, or  with  more  absolute  victory. 

Charles  Lamb  was  born  in  February  of  the  yeai 
1775.  His  immediate  descent  was  humble;  for  bis 
father,  though  on  one  particular  occasion  civilly  de- 
scribed as  a  '  scrivener,'  was  in  reality  a  domestic 
servant  to  Mr.  Salt  —  a  bencher  (and  therefore  a  bar- 
rister of  some  standing)  in  the  Inner  Temple.  John 
Lamb  the  father  belonged  by  birth  to  Lincoln ;  from 
which  city,  being  transferred  to  London  wliilst  yet  a 
boy,  he  entered  the  service  of  Mr.  Salt  without  delay ; 
and  apparently  from  this  period  throughout  his  life 
continued  in  this  good  man's  household  to  support  the 
honorable  relatiom  of  a  Roman  client  to  his  patronus, 
much  more  than  that  of  a  mercenary  servant  to  a  tran- 
sient and  capricious  master.  The  terms  on  which  he 
seems  to  live  with  the  family  of  the  Lambs,  argue  a 
kindness  and  a  liberality  of  nature  on  both  sides.  John 
Lamb  recommended  himself  as  an  attendant  by  the 
versatility  of  his  accomplishments  ;  and  Mr.  Salt,  being 
ft  widower  without  children,  which  means  in  effect  an 
old  bachelor,  naturally  valued  that  encyclopaedic  range 
of  dexterity  which  made  his  house  independent  of  ex- 
ternal aid  for  every  mode  of  service.  To  kill  one's 
i»wn  mutton  is  but  an  operose  way  of  arriving  at  a 
linner,  and  often  a  more  costly  way ;  whereas  to 
combine  one's  cwn  carpenter,  locksmith,  hair-dresser 
(proom,  &c^   all    in   one  man'd   person,  —  to   have  • 


CHABLES    LIMB.  241 

Robinson  Crusoe,  up  to  all  emergencies  of  life,  always 
in  waiting,  —  is  a  luxury  of  the  highest  class  for  one 
who  values  his  ease. 

A  consultation  is  held  more  freely  with  a  man  familial 
to  one's  eye,  and  more  profitably  with  a  man  aware  of 
one's  peculiar  habits.  And  another  advantage  from 
such  an  arrangement  is,  that  one  gets  any  little  altera- 
tion or  repair  executed  on  the  spot.  To  hear  is  to 
obey,  and  by  an  inversion  of  Pope's  rule  — 
♦  One  always  is,  and  never  to  be,  blest.' 

People  of  one  sole  accomplishment,  like  the  homo 
unius  libri,  are  usually  within  that  narrow  circle  dis- 
agreeably perfect,  and  therefore  apt  to  be  arrogant. 
People  who  can  do  all  things,  usually  do  every  one  of 
them  ill ;  and  living  in  a  constant  effort  to  deny  th  « 
too  palpable  fact  they  become  irritably  vain.  But  Mr 
Lamb  the  elder  seems  to  have  been  bent  on  perfection. 
He  did  all  things  ;  he  did  them  all  well ;  and  yet  was 
neither  gloomily  arrogant  nor  testily  vain.  And  being 
conscious  apparently  that  all  mechanic  excellences 
tend  to  illiberal  results,  unless  counteracted  by  per- 
petual sacrifices  to  the  muses,  he  went  so  far  as  to 
cultivate  poetry ;  he  even  printed  his  poems,  and  were 
we  possessed  of  a  copy,  (which  we  are  not,  nor  proba- 
bly is  the  Vatican,)  it  would  give  us  pleasure  at  this 
point  to  digress  for  a  moment,  and  to  cut  them  up, 
purely  on  considerations  of  respect  to  the  author's 
memory.  It  is  iiardly  to  be  supposed  that  thev  did 
lot  really  merit  castigation  ;  and  we  should  best  show 
♦he  sincerity  of  our  respect  for  Mr  Lamb,  senior,  in 
all  those  cases  where  we  could  conscientiously  profesi 
respect,  by  an  unlimited  application  of  the  knout  in 
the  cases  where  we  could  not. 
16 


242  CHARLES    LAMB. 

The  whole  family  of  the  Lambs  seems  to  have  wot 
from  Mr.  Salt  the  consideration  which  is  granted  to 
humble  friends  ;  and  from  acquaintances  nearer  to  their 
own  standing,  to  have  won  a  tenderness  of  esteem  such 
as  is  granted  to  decayed  gentry.  Yet  naturally,  the 
social  rank  of  the  parents,  as  people  still  living,  muat 
have  operated  disadvantageously  for  the  children.  It 
tft  hard,  even  for  the  practised  philosopher  to  distin- 
guish aristocratic  graces  of  manner,  and  capacities  of 
delicate  feeling,  in  people  whose  very  hearth  and  dresa 
Dear  witness  to  the  servile  humility  of  their  station. 
Yet  such  distinctions  as  wild  gift«  of  nature,  timidly 
and  half-unconsciously  asserted  themselves  in  the  un- 
pretending Lambs.  Already  in  their  favor  there  existed 
a  silent  privilege  analogous  to  the  famous  one  of  Lord 
Kinsale.  He,  by  special  grant  from  the  crown,  is 
allowed,  when  standing  before  the  king,  to  forget  that 
he  is  not  himself  a  king  ;  the  bearer  of  that  peerage, 
through  all  generations,  has  the  privilege  of  wearing 
his  hat  in  the  royal  presence.  By  a  general  though 
tacit  concession  of  the  same  nature,  the  rising  genera- 
tion of  the  Lambs,  John  and  Charles,  the  two  sons,  and 
Mary  Lamb,  the  only  daughter,  were  permitted  to  foi- 
get  that  their  grandmother  had  been  a  housekeeper  for 
sixty  years,  and  that  their  father  had  worn  a  livery. 
Charles  Lamb,  individually  was  so  entirely  humble,  and 
so  careless  of  social  distinctions,  that  he  has  takes 
pleasure  in  recurring  to  these  very  facts  in  the  family 
records  amongst  tbe  most  genial  of  his  Elia  recolleo» 
tions.  He  only  continued  to  remember,  without  shame, 
*nd  with  a  peculiar  tenderness,  these  badges  of  plebeian 
*ank,  when  everybody  else,  amongst  the  few  survivort 
/hat  could  have  known  of  their  existence,  had  long  di» 
rniflsed  them  from  their  thoughts. 


CHABLES    LAMB.  243 

Probably  through  Mr.  Salt's  interest,  Charles  Lamb, 
n  the  autumn  of  1782,  when  he  wanted  something 
more  than  four  months  of  completing  his  eighth  year, 
-eceived  a  presentation  to  the  magnificent  school  of 
Christ's  Hospital.  The  late  Dr.  Arnold,  when  con- 
trasting the  school  of  his  own  boyish  experience, 
VVinchester,  with  Rugby,  the  school  confided  to  hia 
management,  found  nothing  so  much  to  regret  in  the 
circumstances  of  the  latter  as  its  forlorn  condition  with 
respect  to  historical  traditions.  Wherever  these  were 
wanting,  and  supposing  the  school  of  sufficient  magni- 
tude, it  occurred  to  Dr.  Arnold  that  something  of  a 
compensatory  efiect  for  impressing  the  imagination 
might  be  obtained  by  connecting  the  school  with  the 
nation  through  the  link  of  annual  prizes  issuing  from 
the  exchequer.  An  official  basis  of  national  patron- 
age might  prove  a  substitute  for  an  antiquarian  oi 
ancestral  basis.  Happily  for  the  great  educational 
foundations  of  London,  none  of  them  is  in  the  naked 
condition  of  Rugby.  Westminster,  St.  Paul's,  Mer- 
chant Tailors,'  the  Charter-house,  &c.,  are  all  crowned 
with  historical  recollections ;  and  Christ's  Hospital, 
.  esides  the  original  honors  of  its  foundation,  so  fitted 
to  a  consecrated  place  in  a  youthful  imagination  —  an 
asylum  for  boy-students,  provided  by  a  boy-king  — 
innocent,  religious,  prematurely  wise,  and  prematurely 
tailed  away  from  earth  —  has  also  a  mode  of  perpetual 
'•onnection  with  the  state.  It  enjoys,  therefore,  hoth 
.)f  Dr.  Arnold's  advantages  Indeed,  all  the  great 
'bundation  schools  of  London,  hearing  in  their  very 
codes  of  organization  the  impress  of  a  double  function 
—  viz.,  the  conservation  of  sound  learning  and  of  pure 
•eligion  —  wear  something  cf  a  monastic  or  cloisteral 


244  CHABLES    LAMB 

tharacter  in  their  aspect  and  usages,  which  is  pecu* 
liarly  impressive,  and  even  pathetic,  amidst  the  uproan 
of  a  capital  the  most  colossal  and  tumultuous  upon 
earth. 

Here  Lamb  remained  until  his  fifteenth  year,  which 
year  threw  him  on  the  world,  and  brought  him  along- 
side the  golden  dawn  of  the  French  Revolution.  Here 
he  learned  a  little  elementary  Greek,  and  of  Latin 
more  than  a  little  ;  for  the  Latin  notes  to  Mr.  Gary  (of 
Dante  celebrity)  though  brief,  are  sufficient  to  reveal  a 
true  sense  of  what  is  graceful  and  idiomatic  in  Latinity. 
We  say  this,  who  have  studied  that  subject  more  than 
most  men.  It  is  not  that  Lamb  would  have  found  it  an 
easy  task  to  compose  a  long  paper  in  Latin  —  nobody 
can  find  it  easy  to  do  what  he  has  no  motive  for  habitu- 
ally practising  ;  but  a  single  sentence  of  Latin  wearing 
the  secret  countersign  of  the  '  sweet  Roman  hand,' 
ascertains  sufficiently  that,  in  reading  Latin  classics,  a 
man  feels  and  comprehends  their  peculiar  force  or 
beauty.  That  is  enough.  It  is  requisite  to  a  man's 
expansion  of  mind  that  he  should  make  acquaintance 
with  a  literature  so  radically  difiering  from  all  modem 
Hterature*as  is  the  Latin.  It  is  not  requisite  that  he 
should  practise  Latin  composition.  Here,  therefore. 
Lamb  obtained  in  sufficient  perfection  one  priceless 
accomplishment,  which  even  singly  throws  a  graceful 
air  of  liberality  over  all  the  rest  of  a  man's  attainments  : 
having  rarely  any  pecuniary  value,  it  challenges  the 
more  attention  to  its  intellectual  value.  Here  also 
(jamb  commenced  the  friendships  of  his  life  ;  and,  of 
all  which  he  formed  he  lost  none.  Here  it  was,  as  the 
tonsummation  and  crown  of  his  advantages  from  th« 
time-honored  hospital,  that  he  came  to  know  '  Poor 

tt.   T     C.        Toy  f>avfittanojaro*. 


0HABLE8    LAMB.  245 

Until  1796,  it  is  probable  that  he  lost  sight  of  Coler- 
dge,  who  was  then  occupied  with  Cambridge,  having 
been  transferred  thither  as  a  '  Grecian '  from  the  house 
of  Christ  Church.  The  year  1795,  was  a  year  of 
change  and  fearful  calamity  for  Charles  Lamb.  On 
that  year  revolved  the  wheels  of  his  after-life.  During 
the  three  years  succeeding  to  his  school  days,  he  had 
held  a  clerkship  in  the  South  Sea  House.  In  1795, 
he  was  transferred  to  the  India  House.  As  a  junior 
clerk,  he  could  not  receive  more  than  a  slender  salary ; 
but  even  this  way  important  to  the  support  of  his  pa- 
rents and  sister.  They  lived  together  in  lodgings  near 
Holbom ;  and  in  the  spring  of  1796,  Miss  Lamb,  (hav- 
ing previously  shown  signs  of  lunacy  at  intervals,)  in 
a  sudden  paroxysm  of  her  disease,  seized  a  knife  from 
the  dinner  table,  and  stabbed  her  mother,  who  died 
upon  the  spot.  A  coroner's  inquest  easily  ascertained 
the  nature  of  a  case  which  was  transparent  in  all  its 
circumstances,  and  never  for  a  moment  indecisive  as 
-egarded  the  medical  symptoms.  The  poor  young 
lady  was  transferred  to  the  establishment  for  lunatica 
at  Hoxton.  She  soon  recovered,  we  believe  ;  but  her 
relapses  were  as  sudden  as  her  recoveries,  and  she 
continued  through  life  to  revisit,  for  periods  of  uncor- 
:ain  seclusion,  this  house  of  woe.  This  calamity  of  his 
preside,  followed  soon  after  by  the  death  of  his  father, 
who  had  for  some  time  been  in  a  state  of  imbecility, 
determined  the  future  destiny  of  Lamb.  Apprehend- 
<ig,  with  the  perfect  grief  cf  perfect  love,  that  his  sis- 
«r'8  fate  was  sealed  for  life  —  viewing  her  as  his  own 
^eatest  benefactress,  which  she  reaily  had  been  through 
iier  advantage  by  ten  years  of  age  —  yielding  mth  im- 
pMsioned  readiness  to  the  depth  of  his  frate'-nal  affeo 


246  CHAKLE8    LA.MB. 

tion,  what  at  any  rate  he  would  have  yielded  to  the 
sanctities  of  duty  as  interpreted  by  his  own  conscience 
—  he  resolved  for  ever  to  resign  all  thoughts  of  marriage 
with  a  young  lady  whom  he  loved,  for  ever  to  abandon 
all  ambitious  prospects  that  might  have  tempted  hira 
into  uncertainties,  humbly  to  content  himself  with  the 
certainties  of  his  Indian  clerkship,  to  dedicate  himself 
for  the  future  to  the  care  of  his  desolate  and  prostrate 
sister,  and  to  leave  the  rest  to  God.  These  sacrifices 
he  made  in  no  hurry  or  tumult,  but  deliberately,  and 
in  religious  tranquillity.  These  sacrifices  were  ac- 
cepted in  heaven  —  and  even  on  this  earth  they  had 
their  reward.  She,  for  whom  he  gave  up  all,  in  turn 
gave  up  all  for  him.  She  devoted  herself  to  his  com- 
fort. Many  times  she  returned  to  the  lunatic  estab- 
lishment, but  many  times  she  was  restored  to  illumi- 
nate the  household  for  him ;  and  of  the  happiness 
which  for  forty  years  and  more  he  had,  no  hour  seemed 
true  that  was  not  derived  from  her.  Henceforwsu-d, 
therefore,  until  he  was  emancipated  by  the  noble 
generosity  of  the  East  India  Directors,  Lamb's  time 
for  nine-and-twenty  years,  was  given  to  the  India 
House. 

'  O  fortunati  nimium,  sua  st  bona  nortnt,'  is  appli- 
cable to  more  people  than  '  agricola.'  Clerks  of  the 
India  House  are  as  blind  to  their  own  advantages  as 
^he  blindest  of  ploughmen.  Lamb  was  summoned,  it  is 
jue,  through  the  larger  and  more  genial  section  of  hij 
life,  to  the  drudgery  of  a  copying  clerk  —  making  con- 
fidential entries  into  mighty  folios,  on  the  subject  of 
calicoes  and  muslins.  By  this  means,  whether  he 
«voiild  or  not,  he  became  gradually  the  author  of  • 
great '  serial '  work,  in  a  frightful  number  of  volumes 


CHABLES    LAMB.  247 

on  as  dry  a  department  of  literature  as  the  children  ol 
the  great  desert  could  have  suggested.  Nobody,  he 
must  have  felt,  was  ever  likely  to  study  this  great  work 
of  his,  not  even  Dr.  Dryasdust.  He  had  written  in 
vain,  which  is  not  pleasant  to  know.  There  would  be 
no  second  edition  called  for  by  a  discerning  public  in 
Leadenhall  Street ;  not  a  chance  of  that.  And  con- 
Bequently  the  opera  omnia  of  Lamb,  drawn  up  in  a 
hideous  battalion,  at  the  cost  of  labor  so  enormous, 
would  be  known  only  to  certain  families  of  spiders  in 
one  generation,  and  of  rats  in  the  next.  Such  a  labor 
of  Sisyphus,  —  the  rolling  up  a  ponderous  stone  to  the 
summit  of  a  hill  only  that  it  might  roll  back  again 
by  the  gravitation  of  its  own  dulness,  —  seems  a  bad 
employment  for  a  man  of  genius  in  his  meridian 
energies.  And  yet,  perhaps  not.  Perhaps  the  col- 
lective wisdom  of  Europe  could  not  have  devised  for 
Lamb  a  more  favorable  condition  of  toil  than  this  very 
India  House  clerkship.  His  works  (his  Leadenhall 
Street  works)  were  certainly  not  read ;  popular  they 
could  not  be,  for  they  w^ere  not  read  by  anybody  ;  but 
then,  to  balance  that,  they  were  not  reviewed.  His 
folios  were  of  that  order,  which  (in  Cowper's  words,) 
not  even  critics  criticize.'  Is  that  nothing?  Is  it  no 
happiness  to  escape  the  hands  of  scoundrel  re\'iewers  ? 
Many  of  us  escape  being  read  ;  the  worshipful  reviewer 
does  not  find  time  to  read  a  line  of  us ;  but  we  do  not 
for  that  reason  escape  being  criticized,  '  shown  up,' 
iind  martyred.  The  list  of  errata  again,  committed  by 
Lamb,  was  probably  of  a  magnitude  to  alarm  any  pos- 
sible compositor  ;  and  yet  these  errata  will  nevei  be 
luiown  to  mankind.  They  are  aead  and  buried.  They 
have  been  cut  off  prematurely ;  and  for  any  effect  upon 


248  CHARLES    LAMB. 

their  generation,  might  as  well  never  have  existed 
Then  the  returns,  in  a  pecuniary  sense,  from  thes< 
folios  —  how  important  were  they  !  It  is  not  common, 
certainly,  to  write  folios ;  but  neither  is  it  common  to 
draw  a  steady  income  of  from  300Z.  to  400Z.  per  an- 
num from  volumes  of  any  size.  This  will  be  admitted  ; 
but  would  it  not  have  been  better  to  draw  the  income 
without  the  toil  ?  Doubtless  it  would  always  be  more 
agreeable  to  have  the  rose  without  the  thorn.  But  in 
the  case  before  us,  taken  with  aU  its  circumstances, 
we  deny  that  the  toil  is  truly  typified  as  a  thorn ;  so 
far  from  being  a  thorn  in  Lamb's  daily  life,  on  the  con- 
trary, it  was  a  second  rose  ingrafted  upon  the  original 
rose  of  the  income,  that  he  had  to  earn  it  by  a  moderate 
but  continued  exertion.  Holidays,  in  a  national  estab- 
lishment so  great  as  the  India  House,  and  in  our  too 
fervid  period,  naturally  could  not  be  frequent ;  yet  all 
great  English  corporations  are  gracious  masters,  and 
indulgences  of  this  nature  could  be  obtained  on  a 
special  application.  Not  to  count  upon  these  accidents 
of  favor,  we  find  that  the  regular  toil  of  those  in 
Lamb's  situation,  began  at  ten  in  the  morning  and 
ended  as  the  clock  struck  four  in  the  afternoon.  Six 
hours  composed  the  daily  contribution  of  labor,  that  is 
precisely  one  fourth  part  of  the  total  day.  Only  that, 
as  Sunday  was  exempted,  the  rigorous  expression  of 
the  quota  was  one  fourth  of  six-sevenths,  which 
makes  six  twenty-eighths  and  not  six  twenty- fourth* 
if  the  total  time.  Less  toil  than  this  would  hardly 
have  availed  to  deepen  the  sense  of  value  in  that 
large  part  of  the  time  still  remaining  disposable.  Had 
there  been  any  resumption  whatever  of  labor  in  th» 
•Tening,  though  but  for  half  an  hour,  that  one  en 


CHARLES    LAMB.  24ft 

iToachment  upon  tlie  broad  continuous  area  of  the 
eighteen  free  hours  would  have  killed  the  tranquillity 
of  the  whole  ^ay,  by  sowing  it  (so  to  speak)  with 
intermitting  anxieties  —  anxieties  that,  like  tides, 
would  still  be  rising  and  falling.  Whereas  now,  at 
the  early  hour  of  four,  when  daylight  is  yet  lingering 
in  the  air,  even  at  the  dead  of  winter,  in  the  latitude 
of  London,  and  when  the  enjoying  section  of  the  day 
is  barely  commencing,  everything  is  left  which  a  man 
would  care  to  retain.  A  mere  dilettante  or  amateur 
student,  having  no  mercenary  interest  concerned, 
would,  upon  a  refinement  of  luxury  —  would,  upon 
choice,  give  up  so  so  much  time  to  study,  were  it  only 
to  sharpen  the  value  of  what  remained  for  pleasure. 
And  thus  the  only  difference  between  the  scheme  of 
the  India  House  distributing  his  time  for  Lamb,  and 
the  scheme  of  a  wise  voluptuary  distributing  his  time 
for  himself,  lay,  not  in  the  amount  of  time  deducted 
from  enjoyment,  but  in  the  particular  mode  of  appro- 
priating that  deduction.  An  intellectual  appropriation 
of  the  time,  though  casually  fatiguing,  must  have 
pleasures  of  its  own  ;  pleasures  denied  to  a  task  so 
mechanic  and  so  monotonous  as  that  of  reiterating 
endless  records  of  sales  or  consignments  not  essentially 
varying  from  each  other.  True ;  it  is  pleasanter  to 
pursue  an  intellectual  study  than  to  make  entries  in  a 
ledger.  But  even  an  in^^ellectual  toil  is  toil ;  few  pco- 
.ile  can  support  it  for  more  than  six  hours  in  a  day. 
A.nd  the  only  question,  therefore,  after  all,  is,  at  what 
[.eriod  of  the  day  a  man  would  prefer  taking  this 
pleasure  of  study.  Now,  uoon  that  point,  as  regards 
the  case  of  Lamb,  there  is  no  opening  for  doubt.  He. 
^mong8t  his  Popular  Fallacies,  admirably  illustrafei 


250  CHARLES    LA.MB. 

the  aecesnity  of  evening  and  artificial  lights  to  the 
prosperity  of  studies.  After  exposing,  with  the  per- 
fection of  fun,  the  savage  unsociality'of  those  eldei 
ancestors  who  lived  (if  life  it  was)  before  lamp- light 
was  invented,  showing  that  'jokes  came  in  with 
candles,'  since  '  what  repartees  could  have  passed  '  when 
people  were  '  grumbling  at  one  another  in  the  dark,' 
and  '  when  you  must  have  felt  about  for  a  smile,  and 
handled  a  neighbor's  cheek  to  be  sure  that  he  under- 
stood it  ? '  —  he  goes  on  to  say,  '  This  accounts  for  the 
seriousness  of  the  elder  poetry,'  viz.,  because  they 
had  no  candle-light.  Even  eating  he  objects  to  as  a 
very  imperfect  thing  in  the  dark ;  you  are  not  con- 
vinced that  a  dish  tastes  as  it  should  do  by  the  promise 
of  its  name,  if  you  dine  in  the  twilight  without  candles. 
Seeing  is  believing.  '  The  senses  absolutely  give  and 
take  reciprocally.'  The  sight  guarantees  the  taste. 
For  instance, '  Can  you  tell  pork  from  veal  in  the  dark, 
or  distinguish  Sherries  from  pure  Malaga  ? '  To  all 
enjoyments  whatsoever  candles  are  indispensable  aa 
an  adjunct;  but,  as  to  reading,  '  there  is,'  says  Lamb, 
'  sibsolutely  no  such  thing  but  by  a  candle.  We  have 
tried  the  affectation  of  a  book  at  noon-day  in  gardene 
but  it  was  labor  thrown  away.  It  is  a  mockery,  all  tnat 
is  reported  of  the  influential  Phoebus.  No  true  poeir 
ever  owed  its  birth  to  the  sun's  light.  Ttie  mild 
internal  light,  that  reveals  the  fine  shapings  of  poetry, 
like  fires  on  the  domestic  hearth,  goes  out  in  the  sun- 
shine. Milton's  morning  hymn  in  Paradise,  we  would 
.old  a  good  wager,  was  penned  at  midnight ;  and  Tay- 
lor's rich  description  of  a  sunrise  smells  decidedly  of 
the  taper.'  This  view  of  evening  and  candle-light  M 
involved  in  literature  may  seem  no  more  than  a  plea» 


chaki.es  lamb.  251 

«nt  extravaganza ;  and  no  doubt  it  is  in  the  nature  of 
Buch  gayeties  to  travel  a  little  into  exaggeration,  but 
substantially  it  is  certain  that  Lamb's  feelings  pointed 
habitually  in  the  direction  here  indicated.  His  literary 
studies,  whether  taking  the  color  of  tasks  or  diversions, 
courted  the  aid  of  evening,  which,  by  means  of  phys* 
ical  weariness,  produces  a  more  luxurious  state  of  re- 
pose than  belongs  to  the  labor  hours  of  day,  and  courted 
the  aid  of  lamp-light,  which,  as  Lord  Bacon  remarked, 
gives  a  gorgeousness  to  human  pomps  and  pleasures, 
^uch  as  would  be  vainly  sought  from  the  homeliness 
i.if  daylight.  The  hours,  therefore,  which  were  with- 
drawn from  his  own  control  by  the  India  House, 
happened  to  be  exactly  that  part  of  the  day  which 
Lamb  least  valued,  and  could  least  have  turned  to 
account. 

The  account  given  of  Lamb's  friends,  of  those  whom 
he  endeavored  to  love  because  he  admired  them,  or  to 
esteem  intellectually  because  he  loved  them  personally, 
is  too  much  colored  for  general  acquiescence  by  Ser- 
geant Talfourd's  own  early  prepossessions.  It  is  natural 
that  an  intellectual  man  like  the  Sergeant,  personally 
made  known  in  youth  to  people,  whom  from  child- 
hood he  had  regarded  as  powers  in  the  ideal  world, 
and  in  some  instances  as  representing  the  eternities  of 
uman  speculation,  since  their  names  had  perhaps 
I  awned  upon  his  mind  in  concurrence  with  the  very 
earliest  suggestion  of  topics  which  they  had  treated, 
should  overrate  their  intrinsic  grandeur.  Hazlitt  ac- 
cordingly is  styled  '  The  great  thinker.'  But  had  he 
^en  such  potentially,  there  was  an  absolute  bar  to  hia 
achievement  of  that  station  in  act  and  consummation. 
Vo  man  can  be  a  great  thinker  in  our  days  upon  Iat^^c 


252  CHABLES    LAMB. 

tnd  elaborate  questions  without  being  also  a  gieat  stu- 
dent. To  think  profoundly,  it  is  indispensable  that  • 
man  should  have  read  down  to  his  own  starting  point, 
and  have  read  as  a  collating  student  to  the  particular 
stage  at  which  he  himself  takes  up  the  subject.  At 
this  moment,  for  instance,  how  could  geology  be  treated 
otherwise  than  childishly  by  one  who  should  rely  upon 
the  encyclopaedias  of  1800  ?  or  comparative  physiology 
by  the  most  ingenious  of  men  unacquainted  with  Mar- 
shall Hall,  and  with  the  apocalyptic  glimpses  of  secret* 
unfolding  under  the  hands  of  Professor  Owen?  In 
such  a  condition  of  undisciplined  thinking,  the  ablest 
man  thinks  to  no  purpose.  He  lingers  upon  parts  of 
the  inquiry  that  have  lost  the  importance  Avhich  once 
they  had,  under  imperfect  chai'ts  of  the  subject;  he 
wastes  his  strength  upon  problems  that  have  become 
obsolete ;  he  loses  his  way  in  paths  that  aie  not  in  the 
line  of  direction  upon  which  the  improved  speculation 
is  moving;  or  he  gives  narrow  conjectural  solutions  of 
difficulties  that  have  long  since  received  sure  and  com- 
prehensive ones.  It  is  as  if  a  man  should  in  th(  se 
days  attempt  to  colonize,  and  yet,  through  inertia  or 
through  ignorance,  should  leave  behind  him  all  modern 
resources  of  chemistry,  of  chemical  agriculture,  or  of 
steam-power.  Hazlitt  had  read  nothing.  Unacquaint- 
ed with  Grecian  philosophy,  with  Scholastic  philoso- 
»hy,  and  with  the  recomposition  of  these  philosophiea 
n  the  looms  of  Germany  during  the  last  sixty  and  odd 
Tears,  trusting  merely  to  the  unrestrained  instincts  of 
^een  mother- wit  —  whence  should  Hazlitt  have  had 
ths  materials  for  great  thinking?  It  is  through  the 
eollation  of  many  abortive  voyages  to  polar  region* 
duit  a  man  gains  his  first  chance  of  entering  the  polar 


HABLES    LAMB.  258 

sasin,  or  of  running  ahead  on  a  true  line  of  approach 
to  it.  The  very  reason  for  Hazlitt's  detect  in  elo- 
quence as  a  lecturer,  is  sufficient  also  as  a  reason  why 
he  could  not  have  been  a  comprehensive  thinker.  '  He 
was  not  eloquent,'  says  the  Sergeant,  '  in  the  true 
sense  of  the  term.'  But  why?  Because  it  seems  '  hia 
thoughts  were  too  weighty  to  be  moved  along  by  the 
shallow  stream  of  feeling  which  an  evening's  excite- 
ment can  rouse,'  —  an  explanation  which  leaves  us  in 
doubt  whether  Hazlitt  forfeited  his  chance  of  eloquence 
by  accommodating  himself  to  this  evening's  excite- 
ment, or  by  gloomily  resisting  it.  Our  own  explana- 
tion is  different ;  Hazlitt  was  not  eloquent,  because  he 
was  discontinuous.  No  man  can  be  eloquent  whose 
thoughts  are  abrupt,  insulated,  capricious,  and  (to  bor- 
row an  impressive  word  from  Coleridge)  non-sequa- 
oious.  Eloquence  resides  not  in  separate  or  fractional 
ideas,  but  in  the  relations  of  manifold  ideas,  and  in  the 
mode  of  their  evolution  from  each  other.  It  is  not ' 
indeed  enough  that  the  ideas  should  be  many,  and 
their  relations  coherent ;  the  main  condition  lies  in  the 
key  of  the  evolution,  in  the  law  of  the  succession.  The 
elements  are  nothing  without  the  atmosphere  that 
moulds,  and  the  dynamic  forces  that  combine.  Now 
Hazlitt's  brilliancy  is  seen  chiefly  in  separate  splinter- 
ings  of  phrase  or  image  which  throw  upon  the  eye  a 
ritreous  scintillation  for  a  moment,  but  spread  no  deep 
suffusions  of  color,  and  distribute  no  masses  of  mighty 
shadow.  A  flash,  a  soUtary  flash,  and  all  is  gone. 
Rhetoric,  according  to  its  quality,  stands  in  many 
iegrees  ot  relation  to  the  permanences  of  truth ;  and 
ill  rhetoric,  like  all  flesh,  is  partly  unreal,  and  Axe 
jlory  of  both  is  fleeting.     Even  the  mighty  rhetori** 


254  CHARLES    LAMB. 

of  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  or  Jeremy  Taylor,  to  wliom  only 
it  lias  been  granted  to  open  the  trumpet-stop  on  tha 
great  organ  of  passion,  oftentimes  leaves  behind  it  the 
sense  of  sadness  which  belongs  to  beautiful  apparition! 
starting  out  of  darkness  upon  the  morbid  eye,  only  to 
be  reclaimed  by  darkness  in  the  instant  of  their  birth, 
or  which  belongs  to  pageantries  in  the  clouds.  But  if 
all  rhetoric  is  a  mode  of  pyrotechny,  and  all  pyrotech. 
nics  are  by  necessity  fugacious,  yet  even  in  these  frail 
pomps,  there  are  niany  degrees  of  frailty.  Some  fire- 
works require  an  hour's  duration  for  the  expansion  of 
their  glory ;  others,  as  if  formed  from  fulminating 
powder,  expire  in  the  very  act  of  birth.  Precisely  on 
that  scale  of  duration  and  of  power  stand  the  glitter- 
ings  of  rhetoric  that  are  not  worked  into  the  texture, 
but  washed  on  from  the  outside.  Hazlitt's  thoughts 
were  of  the  same  fractured  and  discontinuous  order  as 
his  illustrative  images  —  seldom  or  never  self- diffusive  ; 
and  thai,  is  a  sufficient  argument  that  he  had  nevei 
cultivated  philosophic  thinking. 

Not,  however,  to  conceal  any  part  of  the  truth,  we 
are  bound  to  acknowledge  that  Lamb  thought  otherwise 
on  this  point,  manifesting  what  seemed  to  us  an  extrav- 
agant admiration  of  Hazlitt,  and  perhaps  even  in  pari 
for  that  very  glitter  which  we  are  denouncing  —  at  least 
he  did  so  in  conversation  with  ourselves.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  as  this  conversation  travelled  a  little 
mto  the  tone  of  a  disputation,  and  our  frost  on  this  point 
might  seem  to  justify  some  undue  fervor  by  way  of 
Valance,  it  is  very  possible  that  Lamb  did  not  speak  his 
•bsolute  and  most  dispassionate  judgment.  And  yet 
again,  if  he  did,  may  we,  with  all  reverence  for  Lamb'i 
tzquisite  genius  have  permission  to  say  —  that  his  owi 


CHARLES    LAMB.  25A 

constitution  of  intellect  sinned  by  this  very  habit  of  dia- 
continuity.  It  was  a  habit  of  mind  not  unlikely  to  be 
cherished  by  his  habits  of  life.  Amongst  these  habiti 
was  the  excess  of  his  social  kindness.  He  scorned  so 
much  to  deny  his  company  and  his  redundant  hospi- 
tality to  any  man  who  manifested  a  wish  for  either  by 
calling  upon  him,  that  he  almost  seemed  to  think  it  a 
criminality  in  himself  if,  by  accident,  he  really  was 
from  home  on  your  visit,  rather  than  by  possibility  a 
negligence  in  you,  that  had  not  forewarned  him  of  your 
intention.  All  his  life,  from  this  and  other  causes,  he 
must  have  read  in  the  spirit  of  one  liable  to  sudden 
interruption  ;  like  a  dragoon,  in  fact,  reading  with  one 
foot  in  the  stirrup,  when  expecting  momentarily  a 
summons  to  mount  for  action.  In  such  situations,  read- 
ing by  snatches,  and  by  intervals  of  precarious  leisure, 
people  form  the  habit  of  seeking  and  unduly  valuing 
condensations  of  the  meaning,  where  in  reality  the 
truth  suffers  by  this  short-hand  exhibition,  or  else  they 
demand  too  vivid  illustrations  of  the  meaning.  Lord 
Chesterfield  himself,  so  brilliant  a  man  by  nature, 
already  therefore  making  a  morbid  estimate  of  bril- 
liancy, and  so  hurried  throughout  his  life  as  a  public 
man,  read  under  this  double  coercion  for  cravmg  instan- 
taneous eff'ects.  At  one  period,  his  only  time  for  read- 
mg  was  in  the  morning,  whilst  under  the  hands  of  his 
hair-dresser  ;  compelled  to  take  the  hastiest  of  flying 
9hots  at  his  author,  naturally  he  demanded  a  very  con- 
spiouous  mark  to  fire  at.  But  the  author  could  not,  in 
-9  brief  a  space,  be  always  sure  to  crowd  any  very 
prominent  objects  on  tha  eye,  unless  by  being  auda- 
ciously oracular  and  peremptory  as  regarded  the  scnti* 
vent,  or  flashy  in  excess  as  regarded  its  expressioa 


S56  CHARLES    LAMB. 

Come  now.  my  friend,'  was  Lord  Cliesterfield'« 
morning  adjuration  to  his  author  ;  '  come  now,  cut  it 
short  —  don't  prose  —  don't  hum  and  haw.'  The 
fcuthor  had  doubtless  no  ambition  to  enter  his  name  on 
the  honorable  and  ancient  roll  of  gentleman  proseis; 
probably  he  conceived  himself  not  at  all  tainted  with 
the  asthmatic  infirmity  of  humming  and  hawing  ;  but 
as  to  '  cutting  it  short,'  how  could  he  be  sure  of  meet- 
ing his  lordship's  expectations  in  that  point,  unless  by 
dismissing  the  limitations  that  might  be  requisite  to  fit 
the  idea  for  use,  or  the  adjuncts  that  might  be  requisite  to 
integrate  its  truth,  or  the  final  consequences  that  might 
involve  some  deep  arriere  pensee,  which,  coming  last 
in  the  succession,  might  oftentimes  be  calculated  to  lie 
deepest  on  the  mind.  To  be  lawfully  and  usefully 
brilliant  after  this  rapid  fashion,  a  man  must  come 
forward  as  a  refresher  of  old  truths,  where  his  suppres- 
sions are  supplied  by  the  reader's  memory  ;  not  as  an 
expounder  of  new  truths,  where  oftentimes  a  dislocated 
fraction  of  the  true  is  more  dangerous  than  the  false 
itself. 

To  read  therefore  habitually,  by  hurried  instalments, 
has  this  bad  tendency  —  that  it  is  likely  to  found  a  taste 
for  modes  of  composition  too  artificially  irritating,  and 
to  disturb  the  equilibrium  of  the  judgment  in  relation 
to  the  colorings  of  style.  Lamb,  however,  whose  con- 
ititution  of  mind  was  even  ideally  sound  in  reference 
to  the  natural,  the  simple,  the  genuine,  might  seem  cf 
>11  men  least  liable  to  a  taint  in  this  direction.  Ana 
undoubtedly  he  was  so,  as  regarded  those  modes  of 
oeauty  which  nature  had  specially  qualified  him  foi 
apprehending.  Else,  and  in  relation  to  other  model 
jf  beauty,  where  his  sense  of  the  true,  and  of  its  di» 


CHABLiiS    LAMB.  257 

auction  from  the  spurious,  had  been  an  acquired  sense, 
it  is  impossible  for  us  to  hide  from  ourselves  —  that  not 
through  habits  only,  not  through  stress  of  injurious 
accidents  only,  but  by  original  structure  and  tempera 
ment  of  mind.  Lamb  had  a  bias  towards  those  very 
defects  on  which  rested  the  startling  characteristics  of 
style  which  we  have  been  noticing.  He  himself,  we 
fear,  not  bribed  by  indulgent  feelings  to  another,  not 
moved  by  friendship,  but  by  native  tendency,  shrank 
from  the  continuous,  from  the  sustained,  from  the 
elaborate. 

The  elaborate,  indeed,  without  which  much  truth  and 
beauty  must  perish  in  germ,  was  by  name  the  object  of 
his  invectives.  The  instances  are  many,  in  his  own 
beautiful  essays,  where  he  literally  collapses,  literally 
sinks  away  from  openings  suddenly  offering  themselves 
to  flights  of  pathos  or  solemnity  in  direct  prosecution 
of  his  own  theme.  On  any  such  summons  where  ar 
ascending  impulse,  and  an  untired  pinion  were  required, 
he  refuses  himself  (to  use  military  language)  invaria- 
bly. The  least  observing  reader  of  Elia  cannot  hav* 
failed  to  notice  that  the  most  felicitous  passages  alwajrs 
accomplish  their  circuit  in  a  few  sentences.  The  gyra- 
tion Avithin  which  the  sentiment  wheels,  no  matter  of 
what  kind  it  may  be,  is  always  the  shortest  possible. 
It  does  not  prolong  itself,  and  it  does  not  repeat  itself. 
But  in  fact,  other  features  in  Lamb's  mind  would  have 
Argued  this  feature  by  analogy,  had  we  by  accident 
been  left  unaware  of  it  directly.  It  is  not  by  chance, 
i>r  without  a  deep  ground  in  his  nature,  common  to  all 
^s  qualities,  both  affirmative  and  negative,  that  Lamb 
Had  an  insensibility  to  music  more  absolute  that  can 
tove  been  often  shared  by  any  human  creature,  oi 
17 


25b  CHARLES    LAMB. 

perhaps  than  was  e^eT  before  acknowledged  so  can* 
didly.  The  sense  of  music," —  as  a  pleasurable  sense, 
or  as  any  sense  at  all  other  than  of  certain  unmeaning 
and  impertinent  differences  in  respect  to  high  and  low, 
sharp  or  flat,  —  was  utterly  obliterated  as  with  a  sponge 
by  nature  herself  from  Lamb's  organization.  It  was  a 
corollary,  from  the  same  large  substratum  in  his  nature, 
that  Lamb  had  no  sense  of  the  rhythmical  in  prose 
compositions.  Rhythmus,  or  pomp  of  cadence,  or  so- 
norous ascent  of  clauses,  in  the  structure  of  sentences, 
were  effects  of  art  as  much  thrown  away  upon  him  aa 
the  voice  of  the  charmer  upon  the  deaf  adder.  We 
ourselves,  occupying  the  very  station  of  polar  opposi- 
tion to  that  of  Lamb,  being  as  morbidly,  perhaps,  in 
the  one  excess  as  he  in  the  other,  naturally  detected 
this  omission  in  Lamb's  nature  at  an  early  stage  of  out 
acquaintance.  Not  the  fabled  Regulus  with  his  eye- 
lids torn  away,  and  his  uncurtained  eye-balls  exposed 
to  the  noon-tide  glare  of  a  Carthaginian  sun,  could  have 
shrieked  with  more  anguish  of  recoil  from  torture  than 
we  from  certain  sentences  and  periods  in  which  Lamb 
perceived  no  fault  at  all.  Pomp,  in  our  apprehension, 
was  an  idea  of  two  categories  ;  the  pompous  might  be 
spurious,  but  it  might  also  be  genuine.  It  is  well  to 
love  the  simple  —  we  love  it ;  nor  is  there  any  opposition 
at  all  between  that  and  the  very  glory  of  pomp.  But. 
ts  we  once  put  the  case  to  Lamb,  if,  as  a  musician,  as 
the  leader  of  a  mighty  orchestra,  you  had  this  theme 
offered  to  you  —  '  Belshazzar  the  king  gave  a  great 
feast  to  a  thousand  of  his  lords  '  —  or  this,  '  And  on 
a  certain  day,  Marcus  Cicero  stood  up,  and  in  a  se^ 
speech  rendered  solemn  thanks  to  Caius  Caesar  for 
ttuintus  Ligariu<«  pardoned,  and  for  Marcus  Marcellut 


CH1.BLE8    L^MB.  259 

restored  '  —  surely  no  man  would  deny  that,  in  such  « 
case,  simpl'city,  though  in  a  passive  sense  not  lawfully 
absent,  must  stand  aside  as  totally  insufficient  for  the 
positive  part.  Simplicity  might  guide,  even  here,  but 
could  not  furnish  the  power  ;  a  rudder  it  migh  t  be,  but 
not  an  oar  or  a  sail.  This,  Lamb  was  ready  to  allow  • 
as  an  intellectual  quiddity,  he  recognized  pomp  in  the 
character  of  a  privileged  thing  ;  he  was  obliged  to  do 
so ;  for  take  away  from  great  ceremonial  festivals, 
such  as  the  solemn  rendering  of  thanks,  the  celebration 
of  national  anniversaries,  the  commemoration  of  public 
benefactors,  &c.,  the  element  of  pomp,  and  you  take 
away  their  very  meaning  and  life ;  but,  whilst  allowing 
a  place  for  it  in  the  rubric  of  the  logician,  it  is  certain 
that,  sensuously.  Lamb  would  not  have  sympathized 
with  it,  nor  have  felt  its  justification  in  any  concrete 
instance.  We  find  a  difficulty  in  pursuing  this  subject, 
without  greatly  exceeding  our  limits.  We  pause, 
therefore,  and  add  only  this  one  suggestion  as  partly 
explanatory  of  the  case.  Lamb  had  the  dramatic  in- 
tellect and  taste,  perhaps,  in  perfection  ;  of  the  Epic, 
he  had  none  at  all.  Here,  as  happens  sometimes  to 
men  of  genius  preternaturally  endowed  in  one  direction, 
he  might  be  considered  as  almost  starved.  A  favorite 
of  nature,  so  eminent  in  some  directions,  by  what  right 
could  he  complain  that  her  bounties  Avere  not  indis- 
criminate ?  From  this  defect  in  his  nature  it  arose, 
that,  except  by  culture  and  by  reflection.  Lamb  had  no 
genial  appreciation  o1  Milton.  The  solemn  planetary 
'vheelings  of  the  Paradise  Lost  were  not  to  his  taste. 
What  he  did  comprehend,  were  the  motions  like  those 
«if  lightning,  the  fierce  angular  coruscations  of  that  wild 
igoncy  which   comes  forward  so  vividly  in  the  sudder 


t60  CHABLES    LAMB 

ifQintrrtia,  in  tbe  revolutionary  catastrophe,  and  in  the 
tumultuous  conflicts,  tlirough  persons  or  through  situ* 
fttions,  of  the  tragic  drama. 

There  is  another  vice  in  Mr.  Hazlitt's  mode  of  com- 
position, viz.,  the  habit  of  trite  quotation,  too  common 
to  have  challenged  much  notice,  were  it  not  for  these 
reasons  :  1st,  That  Sergeant  Talfourd  speaks  of  it  in 
equivocal  terms,  as  a  fault  perhaps,  but  as  a  '  felici* 
tous '  fault,  '  trailing  after  it  a  line  of  golden  associa- 
tions ; '  2dly,  because  the  practice  involves  a  dishon- 
esty. On  occasion  of  No.  1,  we  must  profess  our  belief 
that  a  more  ample  explanation  from  the  Sergeant  would 
have  left  him  in  substantial  harmony  with  ourselves. 
We  cannot  conceive  the  author  of  Ion,  and  the  friend 
of  Wordsworth,  seriously  to  countenance  that  paralytic 
'  mouth-diarrhoea,'  (to  borrow  a  phrase  of  Coleridge's) 
—  thdit  Jluxe  de  bouche  (to  borrow  an  eai'lier  phrase  of 
Archbishop  Huet's,)  which  places  the  reader  at  the 
mercy  of  a  man's  tritest  remembrances  from  his  most 
Bchool-boy  reading.  To  have  the  verbal  memory 
infested  with  tags  of  verse  and  '  cues '  of  rhyme  is  in 
itself  an  infirmity  as  vulgar  and  as  morbid  as  the  stable- 
boy's  habit  of  whistling  slang  airs  upon  the  mere  me- 
chanical excitement  of  a  bar  or  two  whistled  by  some 
other  blockhead  in  some  other  stable.  The  very  stage 
has  grown  weary  of  ridiculing  a  folly,  that  having  been 
long  since  expelled  from  decent  society  has  taken 
refuge  amongst  the  most  imbecile  of  authors.  Was 
Mr.  Hazlitt  then  of  that  class  ?  No  ;  he  was  a  man  of 
great  talents,  and  of  capacity  for  greater  things  than  he 
ever  attempted,  though  without  any  pretensions  of  the 
philosophic  kind  ascribed  to  him  by  the  Sergeant 
ftieantime  the  reason  for  resisting   the   example   and 


CHABL£8    LAMB.  261 

practice  of  Hazlitt  lies  in  this  —  that  essentially  it  is  at 
war  with  sincerity,  the  foundation  of  all  good  writing, 
to  express  one's  own  thoughts  by  another  man's  words. 
This  dilemma  arises.  The  thought  is,  or  it  is  not, 
worthy  of  that  emphasis  Avhich  belongs  to  a  metrical 
expression  of  it.  If  it  is  not,  then  we  shall  be  guilty  of 
a  mere  folly  in  pushing  into  strong  /elief  that  which 
confessedly  cannot  support  it.  If  it  is,  then  how  in- 
credible that  a  thought  strongly  conceived,  and  bearing 
about  it  the  impress  of  one's  own  individuality,  should 
naturally,  and  without  dissimulation  or  falsehood,  bend 
to  another  man's  expression  of  it !  Simply  to  back 
one's  own  view,  by  a  similar  view  derived  from  another, 
may  be  useful;  a  quotation  that  repeats  one's  own 
sentiment,  but  in  a  varied  form,  has  the  grace  which 
belongs  to  the  idem  in  alio,  the  same  radical  idea  ex- 
pressed with  a  difference  —  similarity  in  dissimilarity  ; 
but  to  throw  one's  own  thoughts,  matter  and  form, 
through  alien  organs  so  absolutely  as  to  make  another 
man  one's  interpreter  for  evil  and  good,  is  either  to 
confess  a  singular  laxity  of  thinking  that  can  so  flexibly 
adapt  itself  to  any  casual  form  of  words,  or  else  to 
confess  that  sort  of  carelessness  about  the  expression 
which  draws  its  real  origin  from  a  sense  of  indifference 
dbout  the  things  to  be  expressed.  Utterly  at  war  tnis 
distressing  practice  is  with  all  simplicity  and  earnest- 
ness of  writing ;  it  argues  a  state  of  indolent  ease 
inconsistent  with  the  pressure  and  coersion  of  strong 
fermenting  thoughts,  before  we  can  be  at  leisure  for 
idle  or  chance  quotations.  But  lastly,  in  reference  to 
No.  2,  we  must  add  that  the  practice  is  signally  dis- 
honest. It  '  trails  after  it  a  line  of  golden  associations.* 
Yew,  and  the  burglar,  who  leaves  an  army-taiior's  a^i 


262  CHARLES    LAMB. 

ii  midnigat  visit,  trails  after  him  perhaps  a  long  roll  of 
gold  bullion  epaulettes  which  may  look  pretty  by  lamp* 
light. 

But  that,  in  the  present  condition  of  moral  philosophy 
amongst  the  police,  is  accounted  robbery ;  and  to 
benefit  too  much  by  quotations  is  little  less.  At  thia 
moment  we  have  in  our  eye  a  work,  at  one  time  not 
without  celebrity,  which  is  one  continued  cento  of 
splendid  passages  from  other  people.  The  natural  efiect 
from  so  much  fine  writing  is,  that  the  reader  rises  with 
the  impression  of  having  been  engaged  upon  a  most 
eloquent  work.  Meantime  the  whole  is  a  series  of 
mosaics  ;  a  tessellation  made  up  from  borrowed  frag- 
ments :  and  first,  when  the  reader's  attention  is  ex- 
pressly directed  upon  the  fact,  he  becomes  aware  that 
the  nominal  author  has  contributed  nothing  more  to  the 
book  than  a  few  passages  of  transition,  or  brief  clauses 
of  connection. 

In  the  year  1796,  the  main  incident  occurring  of  any 
importance  for  English  literature  was  the  publication 
by  Southey  of  an  epic  poem.  This  poem,  the  Joan  cf 
Arc,  was  the  earliest  work  of  much  pretension  amongst 
all  that  Southey  wrote  ;  and  by  many  degrees  it  was 
the  worst.  In  the  four  great  narrative  poems  of  his 
later  years,  there  is  a  combination  of  two  striking 
qualities,  viz.,  a  peculiar  command  over  the  visually 
splendid,  connected  with  a  deep-toned  grandeur  of 
moral  pathos.  Especially  we  find  this  union  in  the 
Thalaba  and  the  Roderick ;  but  m  the  Joan  of  Arc  we 
miss  it.  What  splendor  there  is  for  the  fancy  and  the 
eye  belongs  chiefly  to  the  Vision,  contributed  by  Coler- 
idge, and  this  was  subsequently  withdrawn.  The 
bult  lay  in  Southey  s  political  relations  at  that  Wft , 


CHARLES    LAMB.  263 

his  sympathy  with  the  French  Revolution  m  its  earliei 
stages  had  been  boundless ;  in  all  respects  it  was  a 
noble  sympathy,  fading  only  as  the  gorgeous  coloring 
faded  from  the  emblazonries  of  that  awful  event,  droop- 
ing only  when  the  promises  of  that  golden  dawn  sick- 
ened under  stationary  eclipse.  In  1796,  Southey  was 
yet  under  the  tyranny  of  his  own  earliest  fascination  ; 
in  his  eyes  the  Revolution  had  suffered  a  momentary 
blight  from  refluxes  of  panic ;  but  blight  of  some  kind 
is  incident  to  every  harvest  on  which  human  hopes  are 
suspended.  Bad  auguries  were  also  ascending  from 
the  unchaining  of  martial  instincts.  But  that  the  Rev- 
olution, having  ploughed  its  way  through  unparalleled 
storms,  was  preparing  to  face  other  storms,  did  but 
quicken  the  apprehensiveness  of  his  love  —  did  but 
quicken  the  duty  of  giving  utterance  to  this  loi^e. 
Hence  came  the  rapid  composition  of  the  poem,  wtilch 
cost  less  time  in  writing  than  in  printing.  Hence,  also, 
came  the  choice  of  his  heroine.  What  he  needed  in 
his  central  character  was,  a  heart  with  a  capacity  for 
the  wrath  of  Hebrew  prophets  applied  to  ancient 
abuses,  and  for  evangelic  pity  applied  to  the  sufferings 
of  nations.  This  heart,  with  this  double  capacity  — 
where  should  he  seek  it  ?  A  French  heart  it  must  be, 
or  how  should  it  follow  with  its  sympathies  a  French 
movement  ?  There  lay  Southey's  reason  for  adopting 
the  Maid  of  Orleans  as  the  depositary  of  hopes  and 
aspirations  on  behalf  of  France  as  fervid  as  his  own. 
In  choosing  this  heroine,  so  inadequately  known  at 
that  time,  Southey  testifi'^d  at  least  his  own  nobility 
of  feeling ;  ™  but  in  executing  his  choice,  he  and  his 
friends  overlooked  two  faults  fatal  to  his  purpose. 
One  was  this  :  sympathy  with  the  French  RevoluUoii 


264  CHABLES    LAMB. 

meant  sympathy  with  the  opening  prospects  of  man  — 
meant  sympathy  with  the  Pariah  of  every  climf;  —  with 
all  that  suffered  social  wrong,  or  saddened  in  hopeless 
bondage. 

That  was  the  movement  at  work  in  the  French  Rev- 
olution. But  the  movement  of  Joanna  d'Arc  took  • 
different  direction.  In  her  day  also,  it  is  true,  the 
human  heart  had  yearned  after  the  same  vast  enfran- 
chisement for  her  children  of  labor  as  afterwards 
worked  in  the  great  vision  of  the  French  Revolution. 
In  Iter  days  also,  and  shortly  before  them,  the  human 
hand  had  sought  by  bloody  acts  to  realize  this  dream  of 
the  heart.  And  in  her  childhood,  Joanna  had  not  been 
insensible  to  these  premature  motions  upon  a  path  too 
bloody  and  too  dark  to  be  safe.  But  this  view  of  hu- 
man misery  had  been  utterly  absorbed  to  her  by  the 
special  misery  then  desolating  France.  The  lilies  of 
France  had  been  trampled  underfoot  by  the  conquering 
stranger.  Within  fifty  years,  in  three  pitched  battles 
that  resounded  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  the  chivalry  of 
France  had  been  exterminated.  Her  oriflamme  had 
been  dragged  through  the  dust.  The  eldest  son  of 
Baptism  had  been  prostrated.  The  daugtiter  of  France 
had  been  siirrendered  on  coercion  as  a  bride  to  her 
English  conqueror.  The  child  of  that  marriage,  so 
ignominious  to  the  land,  was  king  of  France  by  the 
consent  of  Christendom  ;  that  child's  uncle  domineered 
as  regent  of  France ;  and  that  child's  armies  were  in 
military  possession  of  the  land.  But  were  they  undis- 
puted masters  ?  No  ;  and  there  precisely  lay  the  sor- 
row of  the  time.  Under  a  perfect  conquest  there  would 
Lave  been  repose ;  whereas  the  presence  of  the  Eng« 
'ieh  armies  did   but  furnish  a  plea,  masking  itself  ia 


\  chabi.es  lamb.  265 

patriotism,  for  gatherings  everywhere  of  lawless  ma^ 
rauders  ;  of  soldiers  that  had  deserted  their  banners  ; 
and  of  robbers  by  profession.  This  was  the  woe  of 
France  more  even  than  the  military  dishonor.  That 
dishonor  had  been  palliated  from  the  first  by  the  gene- 
alogical pretensions  of  the  English  royal  family  to  the 
French  throne,  and  these  pretensions  were  strengthened 
in  the  person  of  the  present  claimant.  But  the  military 
desolation  of  France,  this  it  was  that  woke  the  faith  of 
Joanna  in  her  own  heavenly  mission  of  deliverance. 
It  was  the  attitude  of  her  prostrate  country,  crying 
night  and  day  for  purification  from  blood,  and  not  from 
feudal  oppression,  that  swallowed  up  the  thoughts  of 
the  impassioned  girl.  But  that  was  not  the  cry  that 
uttered  itself  afterwards  in  the  French  Revolution. 
In  Joanna's  days,  the  first  step  towards  rest  for  France 
was  by  expulsion  of  the  foreigner.  Independence  of  a 
foreign  yoke,  liberation  as  between  people  and  people, 
was  the  one  ransom  to  be  paid  for  French  honor  and 
peace.  That  debt  settled,  there  might  come  a  time  for 
thinking  of  civil  liberties.  But  this  time  was  not  within 
the  prospects  of  the  poor  sheperdess.  The  field  — 
the  area  of  her  sympathies  -:-  never  coincided  with  that 
of  a  Revolutionary  period.  It  followed,  therefore, 
that  Southey  could  not  have  raised  Joanna  (with  her 
lOndition  of  feeling)  by  any  management,  into  the 
interpreter  of  his  own.  That  was  the  first  error  in  his 
poem,  and  it  was  irremediable.  The  second  was  — 
and  strangely  enough  this  also  escaped  notice  —  that 
the  heroine  of  Southey  is  made  to  Cxose  her  career  pre- 
cisely at  the  point  when  its  grandeur  commences.  She 
believed  hersel  f  to  have  a  mission  for  the  deliverance 
of  France ;  and  the  grea:  instrument  which  she  was 


266  CHARLKS    LAMB.  ^ 

nuthorized  to  ise  towards  this  end,  was  the  king, 
Charles  YII.  Him  she  was  to  crown.  With  this 
coronation,  her  triumph,  in  the  plain  historical  sense, 
ended.  And  there  ends  Southey's  poem.  But  ex- 
actly at  this  point,  the  grander  stage  of  her  mission 
commences,  viz.,  the  ransom  which  she,  a  solitary 
girl,  paid  in  her  own  person  for  the  national  deliver- 
ance. The  grander  half  of  the  story  was  thus  sacri 
Seed,  as  being  irrelevant  to  Southey's  political  object ; 
and  yet,  after  all,  the  half  which  he  retained  did  not 
at  all  symbolize  that  object.  It  is  singular,  indeed, 
to  find  a  long  poem,  on  an  ancient  subject,  adapting 
itself  hieroglyphically  to  a  modern  purpose  ;  2dly,  to 
find  it  failing  of  this  purpose  ;  and  3dly,  if  it  had 
not  failed,  so  planned  that  it  could  have  succeeded 
only  by  a  sacrifice  of  all  that  was  grandest  in  the 
theme. 

To  these  capital  oversights,  Southey,  Coleridge,  and 
Lamb,  were  all  joint  parties  ;  the  two  first  as  concerned 
in  the  composition,  the  last  as  a  frank  though  friendly 
reviewer  of  it  in  his  private  correspondence  with 
Coleridge.  It  is,  however,  some  palliation  of  these 
oversights,  and  a  very  singular  fact  in  itself,  that 
neither  from  English  authorities  nor  from  French, 
though  the  two  nations  were  equally  brought  into  close 
connection  with  the  career  of  that  extraordinary  girl, 
could  any  adequate  view  be  obtained  of  her  charactei 
and  acts.  The  official  records  of  her  trial,  apart  from 
which  nothing  can  be  depended  upon,  were  first  in  the 
course  of  publication  from  the  Paris  press  during  the 
currency  of  last  year.  First  in  1847,  about  four 
Imndred  and  sixteen  years  after  her  ashes  had  been 
dispersed  to  the   winds,  could  it  be  seen   distinctly 


CHABLES    LAMB.  267 

through  the  clouds  of  fierce  partisanships  and  oatiuna] 
prejudices,  what  had  been  the  frenzy  of  the  persecu- 
tion against  her,  and  the  utter  desolation  of  her  posi- 
tion ;  what  had  been  the  grandeur  of  her  conscientious 
existence. 

Anxious  that  our  readers  should  see  Lamb  from  as 
many  angles  as  possible,  we  have  obtained  from  an 
old  friend  of  his  a  memorial  —  slight,  but  such  as  the 
circumstances  allowed  —  of  an  evening  spent  with 
Charles  and  Mary  Lamb,  in  the  winter  of  1821-22. 
The  record  is  of  the  most  unambitious  character ;  it 
pretends  to  nothing  as  the  reader  will  see,  not  so 
much  as  to  a  pun,  which  it  really  required  some 
singularity  of  luck  to  have  missed  from  Charles  Lamb, 
who  often  continued  to  fire  puns,  as  minute  guns,  all 
through  the  evening.  But  the  more  unpretending  this 
record  is,  the  more  appropriate  it  becomes  by  that  very 
fact  to  the  memory  of  him  who,  amongst  all  authois, 
was  the  humblest  and  least  pretending.  We  have 
often  thought  that  the  famous  epitaph  written  for  his 
grave  by  Piron,  the  cynical  author  of  La  Metromanie, 
might  have  come  from  Lamb,  were  it  not  for  one 
objection ;  Lamb's  benign  heart  would  have  recoiled 
from  a  sarcasm,  however  effective,  inscribed  upon  a 
grave-stone  ;  or  from  a  jest,  however  playful,  that 
tended  to  a  vindictive  sneer  amongst  his  own  farewell 
words.  We  once  translated  this  Piron  epitaph  into  a 
kind  of  rambling  Drayton  couplet ;  and  the  only  point 
needing  explanation  is,  that,  from  the  accident  of 
"icientific  men,  fellows  of  the  Royal  Society  being 
jsually  very  solemn  men,  wifa  an  extra  chance,  there- 
fore, for  being  dull  men  in  conversation,  naturally  it 
irose   that   some  wit   amongst  our  great-grandfatherf 


268  CHABI.ES    I.AMB. 

translated  F.  R.  S.  into  a  short-hand  expression  for  a 
Fellow  Remarkably  Stupid;  to  which  version  of  the 
three  letters  our  English  epitaph  alludes.  The  French 
original  of  Piron  is  this : 

•  Ci  git  Piron  ;  qui  ne  fut  rien; 
Pas  meme  acad^micien.' 

The  bitter  arrow  of  the  second  line  was  feathered  to 
bit  the  French  Academie,  who  had  declined  to  elect 
him  a  member.     Our  translation  is  this : 

•Here  lies  Piron;  who  was —  nothing;  or,  if  that  could  be, 
was  less : 

How  !  —  nothing  ?     Yes,  nothing;  not  so  much  as  F.  B.  8.' 

Rut  now  to  our  friend's  memorandum : 

*«  October  6,  1848. 
"  Mr  DEAK  X.  —  You  ask  me  for  some  memorial, 
however  trivial,  of  any  dinner  party,  supper  party, 
water  party,  no  matter  what,  that  I  can  circumstan- 
tially recall  to  recollection,  by  any  features  whatever, 
puns  or  repartees,  wisdom  or  wit,  connecting  it  with 
Charles  Lamb.  I  grieve  to  say  that  my  meetings  of 
any  sort  with  Lamb  were  few,  though  spread  through 
a  score  of  years.  That  sounds  odd  for  one  that  loved 
Lamb  so  entirely,  and  so  much  venerated  his  character. 
But  the  reason  was,  that  I  so  seldom  visited  London, 
imd  Lamb  so  seldom  qvutted  it.  Somewhere  about 
1810  and  1812  I  must  have  met  Lamb  repeatedly  at 
the  Courier  Office  in  the  Strand  ;  that  is,  at  Coleridge's, 
to  whom,  as  an  intimate  friend,  Mr.  Stuart  (a  proprie- 
tor of  the  paper)  gave  up  for  a  time  the  use  of  some 
rooms  in  the  office.  Thither,  in  the  London  season, 
(May  especially  and  June,)  resorted  Lamb,  Godwin, 
Sir  H.  Davy,  and,  once  or  twice,  Wordsworth,  whc 
visited  Sir  George  Beaumont's  Leicestershire  residence 


CHABLES    LAMB.  269 

»f  Coleijrton  early  in  the  spring,  and  then  travelled 
up  to  Grosvenor  Square  ^vith  Sir  George  and  Lady 
Beaumont :  '  spectaium  veniens,  veniens  spectefnr  ta 
ipse.' 

But  in  these  miscellaneous  gatherings,  Lamb  said 
little  except  when  an  opening  arose  for  a  pun.  And 
licw  effectual  that  sort  of  small  shot  was  from  him,  I 
need  not  say  to  anybody  who  remembers  his  infirmity 
of  stammering,  and  his  dexterous  management  of  it 
for  purposes  of  light  and  shade.  He  was  often  able  to 
train  the  roll  of  stammers  in  settling  upon  the  words 
immediately  preceding  the  effective  one ;  by  which 
means  the  key-note  of  the  jest  or  sarcasm,  benefiting 
by  the  sudden  liberation  of  his  embargoed  voice,  was 
delivered  with  the  force  of  a  pistol  shot.  That  stam- 
mer was  worth  an  annuity  to  him  as  an  ally  of  his  wit. 
Firing  under  cover  of  that  advantage,  he  did  triple 
execution ;  for,  in  the  first  place,  the  distressing  sym- 
pathy of  the  hearers  with  his  distress  of  utterance  won 
for  him  unavoidably  the  silence  of  deep  attention  ;  and 
then,  whilst  he  had  us  all  hoaxed  into  this  attitude  of 
mute  suspense  by  an  appearance  of  distress  that  he 
perhaps  did  not  really  feel,  down  came  a  plunging  shot 
»nto  the  very  thick  of  us,  mth  ten  times  the  effect  it 
would  else  have  had.  If  his  stammering,  however, 
often  did  him  true  '  yeoman's  service,'  sometimes  it 
led  him  into  scrapes.  Coleridge  told  me  of  a  ludicrous 
embarrassment  which  it  caused  him  at  Hastings.  Lamt 
had  been  medically  advised  to  a  course  of  sea-bathing ; 
and  accordingly  at  the  door  of  his  bathing  machine, 
whilst  he  stood  shivering  with  cold,  two  stout  fellows 
'aid  hold  of  him,  one  at  each  shoulder,  like  heraldic 
•upporters :    they   waited  for   the   word  of  command 


270  .iJlABLES    LAMjd. 

from  their  principal,  who  began  the  following  oiatioii 
to  them :  '  Hear  me,  men !  Take  notice  of  this  —  a 
am  to  be  dipped.'  What  more  he  would  have  said  ia 
unknown  to  land  or  sea  or  bathing  machines ;  fol 
having  reached  the  word  dipped,  he  commenced  such  a 
rolling  fire  of  Di  —  di  —  di  —  di,  that  when  at  length 
ne  descended  a  plomb  upon  the  full  word  dipped,  the 
two  men,  rather  tired  of  the  long  suspense,  became 
satisfied  that  they  had  reached  what  lawyers  call  the 
'  operative  clause  '  of  the  sentence  ;  and  both  exclaim- 
mg  at  once,  '  Oh  yes.  Sir,  we're  quite  aware  of  that,* 
iown  they  plunged  him  into  the  sea.  On  emerging, 
^amb  sobbed  so  much  from  the  cold,  that  he  found 
no  voice  suitable  to  his  indignation ;  from  necessity  he 
Beemed  tranquil ;  and  again  addressing  the  men,  who 
stood  respectfully  listening,  he  began  thus  :  '  Men  !  is 
it  possible  to  obtain  your  attention  ? '  '  Oh  surely, 
Sir,  by  all  means.'  '  Then  listen :  once  more  I  tell 
you,  I  am  to  be  di  —  di  —  di  — '  —  and  then,   with  a 

burst  of  indignation,   '  dipped,   I   tell  you,' '  Oh 

decidedly.  Sir,'  rejoined  the  men,  '  decidedly,'  aLd 
down  the  stammerer  went  for  the  second  time.  Petri- 
fied with  cold  and  wrath,  once  more  Lamb  made  a 
feeble  attempt  at  explanation  — '  Grant  me  pa  —  pa  — 
patience ;  is  it  mum  —  um  —  murder  you  me  —  me  -~ 
mean?  Again  and  a  —  ga — ga  —  gain,  I  tell  you, 
I'm  to  be  di  —  di  —  di  —  dipped,'  now  speaking  furi- 
ously, with  the  voice  of  an  injured  man.  '  Oh  yea. 
Sir,'  the  men  replied,  '  we  know  that,  we  fully  under- 
stood it,'  and  for  the  third  time  down  went  Lamb  mto 
the  seu.  '  Oh  limbs  of  Satan  ! '  he  paid,  on  coming  uf 
fo»  the  third  time,  •  it's  now  to  ^  late ;  I  tell  you  that  I 
»m  —  no,  that  I  was  —  to  be  ^i  —  di  —  di  —  dippeo 
9J1-V  cnceJ' 


chabi.es  lamb.  271 

Since  the  rencontres  with  Lamb  at  Coleridge's,  I 
aad  met  him  once  or  twice  at  literary  dinner  parties- 
One  of  these  occurred  at  the  house  of  Messrs.  Taylor 
&  Hessey,  the  publishers.  I  myself  was  suffering  too 
much  from  illness  at  the  time  to  take  any  pleasure 
in  what  passed,  or  to  notice  it  with  any  vigilance  of 
attention.  Lamb,  I  remember,  as  usual,  was  full  of ' 
gayety  ;  and  as  usual  he  rose  too  rapidly  to  the  zenith 
of  his  gayety ;  for  he  shot  upwards  like  a  rocket,  and, 
as  usual,  people  said  he  was  '  tipsy.'  To  me  Lamb 
never  seemed  intoxicated,  but  at  most  aerially  elevated. 
He  never  talked  nonsense,  which  is  a  great  point 
gained ;  nor  polemically,  which  is  a  greater ;  for  it  is 
a  dreadful  thing  to  find  a  drunken  man  bent  upon  con- 
verting oneself ;  nor  sentimentally,  which  is  greatest  of 
all.  You  can  stand  a  man's  fraternizing  with  you  ;  or 
if  he  swears  an  eternal  friendship  only  once  in  an 
hour,  you  do  not  think  of  calling  the  police ;  but  once 
in  every  three  minutes  is  too  much.  Lamb  did  none 
of  these  things  ;  he  was  always  rational,  quiet,  and 
gentlemanly  in  his  habits.  Nothing  memorable,  I  am 
kure,  passed  upon  this  occasion,  which  was  in  Novem- 
ber, of  1821  ;  and  yet  the  dinner  was  memorable  by 
means  of  one  fact  not  discovered  until  many  years 
later.  Amongst  the  company  of  all  literary  men,  sate 
%  murderer,  and  a  murderer  of  a  freezing  class;  cool, 
calculating,  wholesale  in  his  operations,  and  moving  all 
along  under  the  advantages  of  unsuspecting  domestic 
confidence  and  domestic  opportunities.  This  was  Mr. 
Wainwright,  who  was  subsequently  brought  to  trial, 
but  not  for  any  of  his  murders,  and  transported  for  life. 
The  story  has  been  told  by  Sergeant  Talfourd,  in  the 
.«cond  volume  of  these  'Final   Memoirs,'   and   pre- 


•7S  CHARLES    UlUB. 

viously  by  Sir  Edward  B.  Lytton.  Both  have  been 
much  blamed  for  the  upe  made  of  this  extraordinary 
case ;  but  we  knovr  not  why.  In  itself  it  is  a  most 
remarkable  case,  for  more  reasons  than  one.  It  ia 
remarkable  for  the  apalling  revelation  which  it  makes 
of  power  spread  through  the  hands  of  people  not  liable 
to  suspicion,  for  purposes  the  most  dreadful.  It  is 
remarkable  also  by  the  contrast  which  existed  in  this 
case  between  the  murderer's  appearance,  and  the  ter- 
rific purposes  with  which  he  was  always  dallying. 
He  was  a  contributor  to  a  journal  in  which  I  also  had 
written  several  papers.  This  formed  a  shadowy  link 
between  us ;  and,  ill  as  I  was,  I  looked  more  attentive- 
ly at  him  than  at  anybody  else.  Yet  there  were 
several  men  of  wit  and  genius  present,  amongst  whom 
Lamb  (as  I  have  said),  and  Thomas  Hood,  Hamilton 
Reynolds,  and  Allan  Cunningham.  But  them  I  already 
knew,  whereas  Mr.  W.  I  now  saw  for  the  first  time  and 
the  last.  What  interested  me  about  him  was  this,  the 
papers  which  had  been  pointed  out  to  me  as  his, 
(signed  Janus  Weathercock,  Vinkhooms,  &c.)  were 
written  in  a  spirit  of  coxcombry  that  did  not  so  much 
disgust  as  amuse.  The  writer  could  not  conceal  the 
ostentatious  pleasure  which  he  took  in  the  luxurious 
fittings  lip  of  his  rooms,  in  the  fancied  splendor  of  his 
lijouterie,  &c.  Yet  it  was  easy  for  a  man  of  any 
i>xperience  to  read  two  facts  in  all  this  idle  etaJage : 
one  being,  that  his  fineiy  was  but  of  a  second-rato 
order ;  the  other,  that  he  was  a  parvenu,  not  at  home 
even  amongst  his  second-rate  splendor.     So  far  there 

was  nothing  to  distinguish  Mr.  W 's  papers  from 

ihe  papers  of  other  triflers.  But  in  this  point  there 
TOMj  viz.,  that  in  his  judgmec*8  upon  the  great  Italiui 


CHABLES    LAMB.  27S 

nasters  of  painting,  Da  Vinci,  Titian,  <tc.,  there 
■eemed  a  tone  of  sincerity  and  of  native  sensibilit),  a« 
in  one  who  spoke  from  himself,  and  was  not  merely  a 
copier  from  books.  This  it  was  that  interested  me ; 
as  also  his  reviews  of  the  chief  Italian  engravers, 
Morghen,  Volpato,  &c. ;  not  for  the  manner,  which 
overflowed  with  levities  and  impertinence,  but  for  the 
substance  of  his  judgments  in  those  cases  wnere  1 
happened  to  have  had  an  opportunity  of  judging  for 
myself.  Here  arose  also  a  claim  upon  Lamb's  atten- 
tion ;  for  liamb  and  his  sister  had  a  deep  feeling  for 
what  was  excellent  in  painting.  Accordingly  Lamb 
paid  him  a  great  deal  of  attention,  and  continued  to 
speak  of  him  for  years  with  an  interest  that  seemed 
disproportioned  to  his  pretensions.  This  might  be 
owing  in  part  to  an  indirect  compliment  paid  to  Miss 

Lamb  in  one  of  W 's  papers  ;  else  his  appearance 

would  rather  have  repelled  Lamb ;  it  Avas  common- 
place, and  better  suited  to  express  the  dandyism  which 
overspread  the  surface  of  his  manner,  than  the  unaf- 
fected sensibility  which  apparently  lay  in  his  nature, 
Dandy  or  not,  however,  this  man,  on  account  of  the 
schism  in  his  papers,  so  much  amiable  puppyism  on 
one  side,  so  much  deep  feeling  on  the  other,  (feeling, 
applied  to  some  of  the  grandest  objects  that  earth  has 
to  show,)  did  rea^iy  move  a  trifle  of  interest  in  me,  on 
k  day  when  I  hated  the  face  of  man  and  woman.  Yet 
again,  if  I  had  known  this  man  for  the  murderer  that 
even  then  he  was,  what  sudden  loss  of  interest,  what 
sudden  growth  of  another  interest,  would  have  changed 
the  face  of  that  party  !  Trivial  creat  ire,  that  didst 
carry  thy  dreadful  eye  kindling  with  perpetual  trea- 
sons !  Dreadful  creature,  that  didst  carry  thy  trivial 
18 


274  CHARLES    LAMB. 

eye,  mantling  with  eternal  levity,  over  the  sleepinj^ 
surfaces  of  confiding  household  life  —  oh,  what  a 
revolution  for  man  wouldst  thou  have  accomplished 
had  thy  deep  wickedness  prospered  !  What  was  that 
wickedness  ?     In  a  few  words  I  will  say. 

At  this  time  (October  1848)^  the  whole  British  island 
.8  appalled  by  a  new  chapter  in  the  history  of  poison- 
ing. Locusta  in  ancient  Rome,  Madame  Brinvilliera 
in  Paris,  were  people  of  original  genius :  not  in  any 
new  artifice  of  toxicology,  not  in  the  mere  manage- 
ment of  poisons,  was  the  audacity  of  their  genius  dis- 
played. No ;  but  in  profiting  by  domestic  openings 
for  murder,  unsuspected  through  their  very  atrocity. 
Such  an  opening  was  made  some  years  ago  by  those 
who  saw  the  possibility  of  founding  purses  for  parents 
upon  the  murder  of  their  children.  This  was  done 
upon  a  larger  scale  than  had  been  suspected,  and  upon 
a  plausible  pretence.  To  bury  a  corpse  is  costly  ;  but 
of  a  hundred  children  only  a  few,  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  mortality,  will  die  within  a  given  time. 
Five  shillings  a-piece  will  produce  £25  annually,  and 
that  will  bury  a  considerable  number.  On  this  princi- 
ple arose  Infant  Burial  Societies.  For  a  few  shillings 
annually,  a  parent  could  secure  a  funeral  for  every 
child.  II  the  child  died,  a  few  guineas  fell  due  to  the 
parent,  ana  the  funeral  was  accomplished  without  cost 
of  his.  But  on  this  arose  the  suggestion  —  Why  not 
execute  an  insurance  of  this  nature  twenty  times  over? 
One  single  insurance  pays  for  the  funeral  —  the  ether 
nineteen  are  so  much  clear  gain,  a  lucro  ponatur,  foi 
the  parents.  Yes ;  but  on  the  supposition  that  the 
child  died !  twenty  are  no  better  than  one,  unless  they 
u-e  gathered  into  the  gamer.     Now,  if  the  child  dieid 


CHABLES    IJ^.HB.  275 

aatxirally,  all  was  right ;  but  how,  if  the  child  did  not 
die  ?  Why,  clearly  this,  —  the  child  that  can  die,  and 
wron't  die,  may  be  made  to  die.  There  are  many  ways 
of  doing  that ;  and  it  is  shocking  to  know,  that,  ac- 
cording to  recent  discoveries,  poison  is  comparatively  a 
very  merciful  mode  of  murder.  Six  years  ago  a 
dreadful  communication  was  made  to  the  public  by  a 
medical  man,  viz.,  that  three  thousand  children  were 
annually  burned  to  death  under  circumstances  showing 
too  clearly  that  they  had  been  left  by  their  mothers 
with  the  means  and  the  temptations  to  set  themselves 
on  fire  in  her  absence.  But  more  shocking,  because 
more  lingering,  are  the  deaths  by  artificial  appliances 
of  wet,  cold,  hunger,  bad  diet,  and  disturbed  sleep,  to 
the  frail  constitutions  of  children.  By  that  machinery 
it  is,  and  not  by  poison,  that  the  majority  qualify 
themselves  for  claiming  the  funeral  allowances.  Here, 
however,  there  occur  to  any  man,  on  reflection,  two 
eventual  restraints  on  the  extension  of  this  domestic 
curse  :  —  1st,  as  there  is  no  pretext  for  wanting  more 
than  one  funeral  on  account  of  one  chUd,  any  insur- 
ances beyond  one  are  in  themselves  a  ground  of  sus- 
picion. Now,  if  any  plan  were  devised  for  securing 
the  publication  of  such  insurances,  the  suspicions 
would  travel  as  fast  as  the  grounds  for  them.  2dly, 
it  occurs,  that  eventually  the  evil  checks  itself,  since 
a  society  established  on  the  ordinary  rates  of  mortality 
wrould  be  ruined  when  a  murderous  stimulation  was 
applied  to  that  rate  too  extensively.  Still  it  is  certain 
that,  for  a  season,  this  atrocity  has  prospered  in  manu- 
EBkcturing  districts  for  some  years,  and  more  recently, 
M  judicial  investigations  have  shown,  in  one  agricul- 
hiral  district  of  Essex.     Now  Mr.  W. 's  scheme 


^76  CHARLES    LAMB. 

of  murder  was,  in  its  outline,  the  very  same,  but  not 
applied  to  the  narrow  purpose  of  obtaining  burials 
from  a  public  fund.  He  persuaded,  for  instance,  two 
beautiful  young  ladies,  visitors  in  his  family,  to  insure 
their  lives  for  a  short  period  of  two  years.  This  in- 
surance was  repeated  in  several  different  offices,  until 
a  sum  of  £18,000  had  been  secured  in  the  event  of 

their  deaths  within  the  two  years.     Mr.  W took 

care  that  they  should  die,  and  very  suddenly,  within 
that  period ;  and  then,  having  previously  secured  from 
his  victims  an  assignment  to  himself  of  this  claim,  he 
endeavored  to  make  this  assignment  available.  But 
the  offices,  which  had  vainly  endeavored  to  extract 
from  the  young  ladies  any  satisfactory  account  of  the 
reasons  for  this  limited  insurance,  had  their  suspicions 
at  last  strongly  roused.  One  office  had  recently  ex- 
perienced a  case  of  the  same  nature,  in  which  also 
the  young  lady  had  been  poisoned  by  the  man  in 
whose  behalf  she  had  effected  the  insurance ;  all  the 
ofl&ces  declined  to  pay ;  actions  at  law  arose ;  in  the 
course  of  the  investigation  which  followed,  Mr.  W.'s 
character  was  fully  exposed.  Finally,  in  the  midst 
of  the  embarrassments  which  ensued,  he  committed 
'brgery,  and  was  transported. 

From  this  Mr.  W ,  some  few  days  afterwards,  I 

received  an  invitation  to  a  dinner  party,  expressed  in 
terms  that  were  obligingly  earnest.  He  mentioned 
the  names  of  his  principal  guests,  and  amongst  them 
rested  most  upon  those  of  Lamb  and  Sir  David  Wilkie. 
From  an  accident  I  was  unable  to  attend,  and  greatly 
regretted  it.  Sir  David  one  might  rarely  happen  to 
see,  except  at  a  crowded  party.  But  as  regarded 
L«mb,  I  waa  sure  to  see  him  or  to  hear  of  him  agaic 


UUABI.E8    LAMB.  277 

jn  some  way  or  other  within  a  short  time.  This  op- 
portunity, in  fact,  offered  itself  within  a  month  through 
the  kindness  of  the  Lambs  themselves.  Thay  had 
heard  of  my  being  in  solitary  lodgings,  and  insisted  on 
my  coming  to  dine  with  them,  which  more  than  once 
I  did  in  the  winter  of  1821-22. 

The  mere  reception  by  the  Lambs  was  so  full  of 
goodness  and  hospitable  feeling,  that  it  kindled  anima- 
tion in  the  most  cheerless  or  torpid  of  invalids.  I  can- 
not imagine  that  any  memorabilia  occurred  during  the 
visit ;  but  I  will  use  the  time  that  would  else  be  lost 
upon  the  settling  of  that  point,  in  putting  down  any 
triviality  that  occurs  to  my  recollection.  Both  Lamb 
and  myself  had  a  furious  love  for  nonsense,  headlong 
nonsense.  Excepting  Professor  Wilson,  I  have  known 
nobody  who  had  the  same  passion  to  the  same  extent. 
And  things  of  that  nature  better  illustrate  the  realities 
of  Lamb's  social  life  than  the  gravities,  which  weighing 
80  sadly  on  his  solitary  hours  he  sought  to  banish  from 
his  moments  of  relaxation. 

There  were  no  strangers  ;  Charles  Lamb,  his  sister, 
and  myself  made  up  the  party.  Even  this  was  done 
in  kindness.  They  knew  that  I  should  have  been 
oppressed  by  an  effort  such  as  must  be  made  in  the 
jociety  of  strangers  ;  and  they  placed  me  by  their  own 
lireside,  where  I  could  say  as  little  or  as  much  as  I 
pleased. 

We  dined  about  five  o'clock,  and  it  was  one  of  the 
hospitalities  inevitable  to  the  Lambs,  that  any  game 
which  tbey  might  receive  from  rural  friends  in  the 
course  of  the  week,  was  reserved  for  the  day  of  8 
Iriend's  dining  with  them. 

In  regard  to  wine.  Lamb  and  myself  had  the  sam. 


278  CHABLES    I^MB. 

habit  —  perhaps  it  rose  to  the  dignity  of  a  pxinciple  — 
viz.,  to  take  a  great  deal  during  dinner  —  none  after  it. 
Consequently,  as  Miss  Lamb  (who  drank  only  water) 
retired  almost  with  the  dinner  itself,  nothing  remained 
for  men  of  our  principles,  the  rigor  of  which  we  had 
illustrated  by  taking  rather  too  much  of  old  port  before 
the  cloth  was  drawn,  except  talking ;  amcebaean  collo- 
quy, or,  in  Dr.  Johnson's  phrase,  a  dialogue  of  '  brisk 
reciprocation.'  But  this  was  impossible  ;  over  Lamb, 
at  this  period  of  his  life,  there  passed  regularly,  after 
taking  wine,  a  brief  eclipse  of  sleep.  It  descended 
upon  him  as  softly  as  a  shadow.  In  a  gross  person, 
laden  with  superfluous  flesh,  and  sleeping  heavily,  thia 
would  have  been  disagreeable  ;  but  in  Lamb,  thin  even 
to  meagreness,  spare  and  wiry  as  an  Arab  of  the  desert, 
or  as  Thomas  Aquinas,  wasted  by  scholastic  vigils,  the 
afiection  of  sleep  seemed  rather  a  network  of  aerial 
gossamer  than  of  earthly  cobweb  —  more  like  a  golden 
haze  falling  upon  him  gently  from  the  heavens  than  a 
cloud  exhaling  upwards  from  the  flesh.  Motionless  in 
his  chair  as  a  bust,  breathing  so  gently  as  scarcely  to 
seem  certainly  alive,  he  presented  the  image  of  repose 
midwa)'^  between  life  and  death,  like  the  repose  of 
sculpture  ;  and  to  one  who  knew  his  history,  a  repose 
affectingly  contrasting  mth  the  calamities  and  internal 
storms  of  his  life.  I  have  heard  more  persons  than  I 
can  now  distinctly  recall,  observe  of  Lamb  when  sleep- 
ing, that  his  countenance  in  that  state  assumed  an 
expression  almost  seraphic,  from  its  intellectual  beauty 
of  outline,  its  childlike  simplicity  and  its  benignity. 
It  could  not  be  called  a  transfiguration  that  sleep  had 
w^orked  in  his  face ;  for  the  features  wore  essentially 
he  same  expression  when  waking  ;  but  sleep  spiritual 


CHARLES    LAMB.  279 

ized  that  expression,  exalted  it,  and  also  harmonized  it- 
Much  of  the  change  lay  in  tnat  last  process.  The  eyes 
it  was  that  disturbed  the  unity  of  effect  in  Lamb's 
waking  face.  They  gave  a  restlessness  to  the  charac- 
ter of  his  intellect,  shifting,  like  northern  lights,  through 
every  mode  of  combination  with  fantastic  playfulness, 
and  sometimes  by  fiery  gleams  obliterating  for  the  mo- 
ment that  pure  light  of  benignity  which  was  the  pre- 
dominant reading  on  his  features.  Some  people  have 
supposed  that  Lamb  had  Jewish  blood  in  his  veins, 
which  seemed  to  account  for  his  gleaming  eyes.  I 
might  be  so  ;  but  this  notion  found  little  confidence  in 
Lamb's  own  way  of  treating  the  gloomy  mediaeval  tra- 
ditions propagated  throughout  Europe  about  the  Jews, 
and  their  secret  enmity  to  Christian  races.  Lamb,  in- 
deed, might  not  be  more  serious  than  Shakspeare  is 
supposed  to  have  been  in  his  Shylock ;  yet  he  spoke  at 
times  as  from  a  station  of  wilful  bigotry,  and  seemed 
(whether  laughingly  or  not)  to  sympathize  with  the 
barbarous  Christian  superstitions  upon  the  pretended 
bloody  practices  of  the  Jews,  and  of  the  early  Jewish 
physicians.  Being  himself  a  Lincoln  man,  he  treated 
Sir  Hugh^^  of  Lincoln,  the  young  child  that  suff'ered 
death  by  secret  assassination  in  the  Jewish  quarter 
rather  than  suppress  his  daily  anthems  to  the  Virgin,  as 
a  true  historical  personage  on  the  rolls  of  martyrdom  : 
careless  that  this  fable,  like  that  of  the  apprentice  mur- 
dered out  of  jealousy  by  his  master,  the  architect,  had 
destroyed  its  own  authority  by  ubiquitous  diff'usion. 
All  over  Europe  the  same  legend  of  the  murdered  ap- 
prentice and  the  martyred  child  reappears  under  differ- 
ent names —  so  that  in  effect  the  verification  of  the  tale 
8  none  at  all,  because  it  is  unanimous ;  is  too  narrow 


280  CHARLES    LAMB. 

because  it  is  too  impossibly  broad.  Lamb,  however, 
though  it  was  often  hard  to  say  whether  he  were  not 
secretly  laughing,  swore  to  the  truth  of  all  these  old 
fables,  and  treated  the  Liberalities  of  the  present  gene- 
ation  on  such  points  as  mere  fantastic  and  effeminate 
affectations,  which,  no  doubt,  they  often  are  as  regards 
the  sincerity  of  those  who  profess  them.  The  bigotry 
which  it  pleased  his  fancy  to  assume,  he  used  like  a 
sword  against  the  Jew,  as  the  official  weapon  of  the 
Christian,  upon  the  same  principle  that  a  Capulet  would 
have  drawn  upon  a  Montague,  without  concei\'ing  it 
any  duty  of  his  to  rip  up  the  grounds  of  so  ancient  a 
quarrel ;  it  was  a  feud  handed  down  to  him  by  his 
ancestors,  and  it  was  their  business  to  see  that  originally 
it  had  been  an  honest  feud.  I  cannot  yet  believe  that 
Lamb,  if  seriously  aware  of  any  family  interconnection 
with  Jewish  blood,  would,  even  in  jest,  have  held  that 
one-sided  language.  More  probable  it  is,  that  the 
fiery  eye  recorded  not  any  alliance  with  Jewish  blood, 
but  that  disastrous  alliance  with  insanity  which  tainted 
his  own  life,  and  laid  desolate  his  sister's. 

On  awakening  from  his  brief  slumber.  Lamb  sat  for 
some  time  in  profound  silence,  and  then,  with  the  most 
startling  rapidity,  sang  out  —  '  Diddle,  diddle,  dump- 
kins  ;  '  not  looking  at  me,  but  as  if  soliloquizing.  For 
five  minutes  he  relapsed  into  the  same  deep  silence ; 
rom  which  again  he  started  up  into  the  same  abrupt 
utterance  of  —  '  Diddle,  diddle,  dumpkins.'  I  could 
TiOt  help  laughing  aloud  at  the  extreme  energy  of  this 
sudden  communication,  contrasted  vnth.  the  deep 
silence  that  went  before  and  followed.  Lamb  smil- 
ingly begged  to  know  what  I  was  laughing  at,  and 
with   a  look  of  as  much  surprise  as  if  it  were  I  tha 


CHARLES    LAXB.  281 

aad  done  something  unaccountable,  and  not  himself. 
I  told  him  (as  was  the  truth)  that  there  had  suddenly- 
occurred  to  me  the  possibility  of  my  being  in  some 
future  period  or  other  calied  on  to  give  an  account 
of  this  very  evening  before  some  literary  committee. 
The  committee  might  say  to  me  —  (supposing  the  case 
that  I  outlived  him)  —  '  You  dined  with  Mr.  Lamb  in 
January,  1822;  now,  can  you  remember  any  remark 
or  memorable  observation  which  that  celebrated  man 
made  before  or  after  dinner  ?  ' 

I  as  respondent.     '  Oh  yes,  I  can.' 

Com.  '  What  was  it  ?  ' 

Resp.  '  Diddle,  diddle,  dumpkins.' 

Com.  '  And  was  this  his  only  observation  ?  Did 
Mr.  Lamb  not  strengthen  this  remark  by  some  other 
of  the  same  nature  ?  ' 

Resp.  '  Yes,  he  did.' 

Com.  '  And  what  was  it  ? ' 

Resp.  '  Diddle,  diddle,  dumpkins.' 

Com.  '  What  is  your  secret  opinion  of  Dumpkins  ? 
Do  you  conceive  Dumpkins  to  have  been  a  thing  or  a 
pel  son  ? ' 

Resp.  '  I  conceive  Dumpkins  to  have  been  a  person, 
having  the  rights  of  a  person.' 

Com.  '  Capable,  for  instance,  of  suing  and  being 
>aed  ? ' 

Resp.  '  Yes,  capable  of  both  ;  though  I  have  reason 
to  think  there  would  have  been  very  little  use  in  suing 
Dumpkins.' 

Com.  '  How  so  ?  Are  the  committee  to  understand 
ihat  you,  the  respondent,  in  your  own  case,  have  found 
"t  a  vain  speculation,  countenanced  oaly  by  visionary 
lawyers,  to  sue  Dumpkins  ?  ' 


282  CHARLES    LAMB. 

Resp.  '  No  ;  I  never  lost  a  shilling  by  Dumpkins, 
.he  reason  for  which  may  be  that  Dumpkinb  nevei 
owed  me  a  shilling  ;  but  from  his  prancmen  of  "  did- 
dle," I  apprehend  that  he  was  too  well  acquainted 
with  joint-stock  companies  ! ' 

Com.  '  And  your  opinion,  is,  that  he  may  have  did- 
dled Mr.  Lamb  ? ' 

Resp.  '  I  conceive  it  to  be  not  unlikely.' 

Com.  '  And,  perhaps,  from  Mr.  Lamb's  pathetic  re- 
Iteration  of  his  name,  "  Diddle,  diddle,"  you  would  be 
disposed  to  infer  that  Dumpkins  had  practised  his  did- 
dling talents  upon  Mr.  L.  more  than  once  r ' 

Resp.  '  I  think  it  probable.' 

Lamb  laughed  and  brightened  up ;  tea  was  an- 
nounced ;  Miss  Lamb  returned.  The  cloud  had  passed 
away  from  Lamb's  spirits,  and  again  he  realized  the 
pleasure  of  evening,  which,  in  his  apprehension,  was 
80  essential  to  the  pleasure  of  literature. 

On  the  table  lay  a  copy  of  Wordsworth,  in  two 
volumes  :  it  was  the  edition  of  Longman,  printed  about 
the  time  of  Waterloo.  Wordsworth  was  held  in  little 
consideration,  I  believe,  amongst  the  house  of  Long- 
man ;  at  any  rate,  their  editions  of  his  works  were  got 
up  in  the  most  slovenly  manner.  In  particular,  the 
table  of  contents  was  drawn  up  like  a  short-hand  biU 
of  parcels.  By  accident  the  book  lay  open  at  a  part 
of  this  table,  where  the  sonnet  beginning  — 

<  Alas  !  what  boots  the  long  laborioas  quest  *  — 

aad  been  entered  with  mercantile  speed,  as  — 

'  Alas  what  boots,' 

'  Yes,'  said  Lamb,  reading  this  entry  in  a  dolorouf 
/)ne  of  voice,  'he  may  well  say  that.     I  paid  Hoby 


CHAKLES    LAMb.  283 

three  guineas  for  a  pair  that  tore  like  blotting-paper 
when  I  was  leaping  a  ditch  to  escape  a  farmer  that 
pursued  me  with  a  pitch-fork  for  trespassing.  But 
why  should  W.  wear  boots  in  Westmoreland  ?  Pray, 
advise  him  to  patronize  shoes.' 

The  mercurialities  of  Lamb  were  infinite,  and  always 
•uttered  in  a  spirit  of  absolute  recklessness  for  the 
quality  or  the  prosperity  of  the  sally.  It  seemed  to 
liberate  his  spirits  from  some  burthen  of  blackest  mel- 
incholy  which  oppressed  it,  when  he  had  thrown  off  a 
jest :  he  would  not  stop  one  instant  to  improve  it ; 
nor  did  he  care  the  value  of  a  straw  whether  it  were 
good  enough  to  be  remembered,  or  so  mediocre  as  to 
extort  high  moral  indignation  from  a  collector  who  re- 
fused to  receive  into  his  collection  of  jests  and  puna 
any  that  were  not  felicitously  good  or  revoltingly 
bad. 

After  tea,  Lamb  read  to  me  a  number  of  beautiful 
compositions,  which  he  had  himself  taken  the  trouble 
to  copy  out  into  a  blank  paper  folio  from  unsuccessful 
authors.  Neglected  people  in  every  class  won  the 
sympathy  of  Lamb.  One  of  the  poems,  I  remember, 
was  a  very  beautiful  sonnet  from  a  volume  recently 
published  by  Lord  Thurlow  —  which,  and  Lamb's  just 
remarks  upon  it,  I  could  almost  repeat  verbatim  at  thi8 
moment,  nearly  twenty- seven  years  later,  if  your  limits 
would  allow  me.  But  these,  you  tell  me,  allow  of  no 
Buch  thing  ;  at  the  utmost  they  allow  only  twelve  lines 
more.  Now  all  the  world  knows  that  the  sonnet  itself 
would  require  fourteen  lines  ;  but  take  fourteen  from 
twelve,  and  there  remains  very  little,  I  fear ;  besidei 
which,  I  am  afraid  two  of  my  twelve  are  already  ex 
iiaus^ed.     This  forces  me  to  interrupt  my  account  of 


284  CHABLES    LAMB. 

Lamb's  reading,  by  reporting  the  very  accident  that  did 
interrupt  it  in  fact ;  since  that  no  less  characteristically 
expressed  Lamb's  peculiar  spirit  of  kindness,  (alwayt 
quickening  itself  towards  the  ill-used  or  the  down- 
trodden,) than  it  had  previously  expressed  itself  in  his 
choice  of  obscure  readings.  Two  ladies  came  in,  one 
of  whom  at  least  had  sunk  in  the  scale  of  worldly  con- 
Bideration.  They  were  ladies  who  would  not  hdve 
found  much  recreation  in  literary  discussions ;  elderly, 
and  habitually  depressed.  On  their  account.  Lamb 
proposed  whist,  and  in  that  kind  effort  to  amuse  them, 
which  naturally  drew  forth  some  momentary  gayeties 
from  himself,  but  not  of  a  kind  to  impress  themselves 
on  the  recollection,  the  evening  teiininated." 

We  have  left  ourselves  no  room  for  a  special  exam- 
ination of  Lamb's  writings,  some  of  which  were  failures, 
and  some  were  so  memorably  beautiful  as  to  be  uniques 
in  their  class.  The  character  of  Lamb  it  is,  and  the 
life-struggle  of  Lamb,  that  must  fix  the  attention  of 
many,  even  amongst  those  wanting  in  sensibility  to  his 
intellectual  merits.  This  character  and  this  struggle, 
as  we  have  already  observed,  impress  many  traces  of 
themselves  upon  Lamb's  writings.  Even  in  that  view, 
therefore,  they  have  a  ministerial  value  ;  but  separately, 
for  themselves,  they  have  an  independent  value  of  the 
highest  order.  Upon  this  point  we  gladly  adopt  the 
eloquent  words  of  Sergeant  Talfourd  :  — 

*  The  sweetness  of  Lamb's  character,  breathed  through 
his  writings,  was  felt  even  by  strangers  ;  but  its  heroic  as- 
pect was  unguessed  even  by  many  of  his  friends.  Let  them 
DOW  consider  it,  and  ask  if  the  annals  of  self-sacrifice  cao 
■how  anything  in  human  action  and  endurance  more  lovelj 


CHABLBS    LAMB.  28«S 

<han  its  self-devotion  exhibits  ?  It  was  not  merely  that  he 
law,  through  the  ensanguined  cloud  of  misfortune  which 
had  fallen  upon  his  family,  the  unstained  excellence  of  hia 
sister,  whose  madness  had  caused  it :  that  he  was  ready  to 
take  her  to  his  own  home  with  reverential  affection,  and 
cherish  her  through  life  ;  and  he  gave  up,  for  her  sake,  all 
meaner  and  more  selfish  love,  and  all  the  hopes  which  youth 
blends  with  the  passion  which  disturbs  and  ennobles  it ;  not 
even  that  he  did  all  this  cheerfully,  without  pluming  him- 
self upon  his  brotherly  nobleness  as  a  virtue,  or  seeking  to 
repay  himself  (as  some  uneasy  martyrs  do)  by  small  instal- 
ments of  long  repining  ;  but  that  he  carried  the  spirit  of  the 
hour  in  which  he  first  knew  and  took  his  course  to  his  last. 
So  far  from  thinking  that  his  sacrifice  of  youth  and  love  to 
his  sister  gave  him  a  license  to  follow  his  own  caprice  at  the 
expense  of  her  feelings,  even  in  the  lightest  matters,  he  al- 
ways wrote  and  spoke  of  her  as  his  wiser  self,  his  generous 
benefactress,  of  whose  protecting  care  he  was  scarcely 
worthy.' 

It  must  be  remembered,  also,  which  the  Sergeant 
does  not  overlook,  that  Lamb's  efforts  for  the  becoming 
support  of  his  sister  lasted  through  a  period  of  forty 
years.  Twelve  years  before  his  death,  the  munificence 
of  the  India  House,  by  granting  him  a  liberal  retiring 
allowance,  had  placed  his  own  support  under  shelter 
from  accidents  of  any  kind.  But  this  died  with  him- 
self ;  and  he  could  not  venture  lo  suppose  that,  in  the 
event  of  his  own  death,  the  India  House  would  grant 
to  his  sister  the  same  allowance  as  by  custom  is 
granted  to  a  wife.  This  they  did  ;  but  not  venturing 
to  calculate  upon  such  nobility  of  patronage.  Lamb 
kiad  applied  himself  vhrough  life  to  the  saving  of  a 
provision  for  his  sister  under  any  accident  to  himself. 
Ajid  this  he  did  with  a  persevering  prudence,  so  little 
Known  )Q  the  literary  class,  amongst  a  continued  tenor 


286  CHABLE8    LAMB. 

of  generosities,  often  so  princely  as  to  be  scarcely 
known  in  any  class. 

Was  this  man,  so  memorably  good  by  life-long 
Bacrifice  of  himself,  in  any  profound  sense  a  Christian  ? 
The  impression  is,  that  he  was  not.  We,  from  private 
communications  with  him,  can  undertake  to  say  that, 
according  to  his  knowledge  and  opportunities  for  the 
study  of  Christianity,  he  was.  What  has  injured 
Lamb  on  this  point  is,  that  his  early  opinions  (which, 
however,  from  the  first  were  united  with  the  deepest 
piety)  are  read  by  the  inattentive,  as  if  they  had  been 
the  opinions  of  his  mature  days  ;  secondly,  that  he  had 
few  religious  persons  amongst  his  friends,  which  made 
him  reserved  in  the  expression  of  his  own  views ; 
thirdly,  that  in  any  case  where  he  altered  opinions  for 
the  better,  the  credit  of  the  improvement  is  assigned  to 
Coleridge.  Lamb,  for  example,  beginning  life  as  a 
Unitarian,  in  not  many  years  became  a  Trinitarian. 
Coleridge  passed  through  the  same  changes  in  the 
same  order ;  and  here,  at  least,  Lamb  is  supposed 
simply  to  have  obeyed  the  influence,  confessedly  great, 
of  Coleridge.  This,  on  our  own  knowledge  of  Lamb's 
views,  we  pronounce  to  be  an  error.  And  the  foUow- 
Jig  extracts  from  Lamb's  letters  will  show,  not  only 
that  he  was  religiously  disposed  on  impulses  self- 
derived,  but  that,  so  far  from  obeying  the  bias  of 
Coleridge,  he  ventured,  on  this  one  subject,  firmly  as 
regarded  the  matter,  though  humbly  as  regarded  the 
manner,  affectionately  to  reprove  Coleridge. 

In  a  letter  to  Coleridge,  written  in  1797,  the  year 
hfter  his  first  great  affliction,  he  says  : 

'  Coleridge,  I  have  not  one  truly  elevated  character  among 
4aj  aoquaintance  ;  not  one  Christian ;  not  one  but  under 


CHAKLES    liAMB.  287 

ralues  Christianity  Singly,  what  am  I  to  do  ?  Wesley  — 
[have  you  read  his  life?]  — was  he  not  an  elevated  charac- 
ter ?  Wesley  has  said  religion  was  not  a  solitary  thing. 
Alas !  it  is  necessarily  so  with  me,  or  next  to  solitary.  'Tia 
true  you  write  to  me ;  but  correspondence  by  letter  and 
personal  intimacy  are  widely  different.  Do,  do  write  to 
me ;  and  do  some  good  to  my  mind  —  already  how  much 
"  warped  and  relaxed  ' '  by  the  world  !  ' 

In  a  letter  written  about  three  months  previously, 
he  had  not  scrupled  to  blame  Coleridge  at  some  length 
for  audacities  of  religious  speculation,  which  seemed  to 
him  at  war  with  the  simplicities  of  pure  religion.  He 
gays : 

*  Do  continue  to  write  to  me.  I  read  your  letters  with 
my  sister,  and  they  give  us  both  abundance  of  delight 
Especially  they  please  us  two  when  you  talk  in  a  religious 
■train.  Not  but  we  are  offended  occasionally  with  a  certain 
freedom  of  expression,  a  certain  air  of  mysticism,  more 
consonant  to  the  conceits  of  pagan  philosophy  than  consist- 
ent with  the  humility  of  genuine  piety.' 

Then,  after  some  instances  of  what  he  blames,  he 
says: 

'  Be  not  angry  with  me,  Coleridge.  I  wish  not  to  cavil , 
I  know  I  cannot  instruct  you  ;  I  only  wish  to  remind  you 
of  that  humility  which  best  becometh  the  Christian  char< 
Bcter.  God,  in  the  New  Testament,  our  best  guide,  is 
represented  to  us  in  the  kind,  condescending,  amiable,  fa- 
miliar light  of  a  parent  ;  and,  in  my  poor  mind,  'tis  best 
tor  us  so  to  consider  him  as  our  heavenly  Father,  and  our 
best  friend,  without  indulging  too  bold  conceptions  of  hi* 
character.' 

A.bout  a  month  later,  he  says  : 

'  Few  but  laugh  at  me  for  reading  my  Testament.  They 
talk  a  language  I  understand  not ;  I  conceai  sentiments  that 
Vould  be  a  puzzle  to  them  ' 


288  chJlBles  lamb. 

We  see  by  this  last  quotation  where  it  was  that 
Liamb  originally  sought  for  consolation.  We  person- 
ally can  vouch  that,  at  a  maturer  period,  when  he  was 
approaching  his  fiftieth  year,  no  change  had  affected 
his  opinions  upon  that  point ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  no  changes  had  occurred  in  his  needs  for  consola- 
tion, we  see,  alas  !  in  the  records  of  his  life.  Whither, 
indeed,  could  he  fly  for  comfort,  if  not  to  his  Bible? 
And  to  whom  was  the  Bible  an  indispensable  resource, 
if  not  to  Lamb  ?  We  do  not  undertake  to  say,  that  in 
his  knowledge  of  Christianity  he  was  everywhere  pro- 
found or  consistent,  but  he  was  always  earnest  in  his 
aspirations  after  its  spiritualities,  and  had  an-  apprehen- 
sive sense  of  its  power. 

Charles  Lamb  is  gone;  his  life  was  a  continued 
struggle  in  the  service  of  love  the  purest,  and  within 
a  sphere  visited  by  little  of  contemporary  applause. 
Even  his  intellectual  displays  won  but  a  narrow  sym- 
pathy at  any  time,  and  in  his  earlier  period  were 
saluted  with  positive  derision  and  contumely  on  the 
few  occasions  when  they  were  not  oppressed  by  entire 
neglect.  But  slowly  all  things  right  themselves.  All 
merit,  which  is  founded  in  truth,  and  is  strong  enough, 
reaches  by  sweet  exhalations  in  the  end  a  higher  sen-' 
Bory ;  reaches  higher  organs  of  discernment,  lodged  in 
a  selector  audience.  But  the  original  obtuseness  oi 
vulgarity  of  feeling  that  thwarted  Lamb's  just  estima- 
tion in  life,  will  continue  to  thwart  its  popular  diffu- 
sion. There  are  even  some  that  continue  to  regard 
bim  with  the  old  hostility.  And  we,  therefore,  stand- 
ing by  the  side  of  Lamb's  grave,  seemed  to  hear,  on 
one  side,  (but  in  abated  tones,)  strains  of  the  ancienf 
tnalicf*         Ihi*  man,  that  thought  himself  to  be  some' 


OHABLES    LAMB.  28& 

3ody,  is  dead  —  is  buried  —  is  forgotten ! '  and,  on  the 
other  side,  seemed  to  hear  ascending,  as  with  the 
■olemnity  of  an  anthem  —  'This  man,  that  thought 
himself  to  be  nobody,  is  dead — is  buried;  his  life 
has  been  searched ;  and  his  memory  is  hallowed  to 
eTerl* 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY. 


There  is  no  wnter  named  amonffst  men,  of  whom, 
so  much  as  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shellej',  it  is  difficult  for 
a  conscientious  critic  to  speak  with  the  truth  and  the 
respect  due  to  his  exalted  powers,  and  yet  without 
offence  to  feelings  the  most  sacred,  which  too  memo- 
rably he  outraged.  The  indignation  which  this  power- 
ful young  writer  provoked,  had  its  root  in  no  personal 
feelings  —  those  might  have  been  conciliated ;  in  no 
worldly  feelings  —  those  might  have  proved  transitory  ; 
but  in  feelings  the  holiest  which  brood  over  human 
life,  and  which  guard  the  sanctuary  of  religious  truth. 
Consequently,  —  which  is  a  melancholy  thought  for  any 
friend  of  Shelley's,  —  the  indignation  is  likely  to  be  co- 
extensive and  coenduring  with  the  writings  that  pro- 
voked it.  That  bitterness  of  scorn  and  defiance  which 
sti'l  burns  against  his  name  in  the  most  extensively 
meditative  section  of  English  society,  namely,  the  reli- 
gio'is  section,  is  not  of  a  nature  to  be  propitiated.  Selfish 
interests,  being  wounded,  might  be  compensated ; 
merely  human  interests  might  be  soothed ;  but  inter 
»sts  'hat  transcend  all  human  valuation,  being  so  in 
iulted,  must  upon   principle  reject  all    human  ransoir 


PERCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY.  291 

or  conditions  of  human  compromise.  Less  than  peui* 
tential  recantation  could  not  be  accepted :  and  that  is 
now  impossible.  "  Will  ye  transact^  with  God  ? "  is 
the  indignant  language  of  Milton  in  a  case  of  that 
nature.  And  in  this  case  the  language  of  many  pious 
men  said  aloud,  — "  It  is  for  God  to  forgive ;  but  we, 
his  servants,  are  bound  to  recollect  that  this  young 
man  oflfered  to  Christ  and  to  Christianity  the  deepest 
insult  which  ear  has  heard,  or  which  it  has  entered  into 
the  heart  of  man  to  conceive."  Others,  as  in  Germany, 
had  charged  Christ  with  committing  suicide,  on  the 
principle  that  he  who  tempts  or  solicits  death  by  doc- 
trines fitted  to  provoke  that  result,  is  virtually  the 
causer  of  his  own  destruction.  But  in  this  sense  every 
man  commits  suicide,  who  will  not  betray  an  interest 
confided  to  his  keeping  under  menaces  of  death ;  the 
martyr,  who  perishes  for  truth,  when  by  deserting  it 
he  might  live  ;  the  patriot,  who  perishes  for  his  coun- 
try, when  by  betraymg  it  he  might  win  riches  and 
nonor.  And,  were  this  even  otherwise,  the  objection 
would  be  nothing  to  Christians  —  who,  recognizing  the 
Deity  m  Christ,  recognize  his  unlimited  right  over  life. 
Some,  a£;ain,  had  pointed  their  insults  at  a  part  more 
vital  in  Christianity,  if  it  had  happened  to  be  as  vul 
nerable  as  ihey  fancied.  The  new  doctrine  introduced 
by  Christ,  of  forgiveness  to  those  who  injure  or  who 
hate  us,  —  on  what  footing  was  it  placed  ?  Once,  at 
least  in  appearance,  on  the  idea,  that  by  assisting  or 
©rgiving  an  enemy,  we  should  be  eventually  "  heaping 
toals  of  fire  upon  his  head."  Mr.  Howdon,  in  a  very 
I  lever  book  [Ratio7ial  Investigation  of  the  Prindplei 
f  Natural  Philosophy :  London,   1840],   calls  this  "  a 


292  PERCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY. 

fiendish  idea "  (p.  290) :  and  1  acknowledge  that  to 
myself  in  cne  part  of  my  boyhood,  it  did  seem  a  refine- 
went  of  malice.  My  subtilizing  habits,  howe*  er,  even 
in  those  days,  soon  suggested  to  me  that  this  aggrava 
tion  of  guilt  in  the  object  of  our  forgiveness  was  not 
held  out  as  the  motive  to  the  forgiveness,  but  as  the 
result  of  it ;  secondly,  that  perhaps  no  aggravation  of 
his  guilt  was  the  point  contemplated,  but  the  salutary 
stinging  into  life  of  his  remorse,  hitherto  sleeping; 
thirdly,  that  every  doubtful  or  perplexing  expression 
must  be  overruled  and  determined  by  the  prevailing 
spirit  of  the  system  in  which  it  stands.  If  Mr.  How- 
don's  sense  were  the  true  one,  then  this  passage  would 
be  in  pointed  hostility  to  every  other  part  of  the  Chris- 
tian ethics.  ^ 

These  were  affronts  to  the  Founder  of  Christianity 
offered  too  much  in  the  temper  of  malignity.  But 
Shelley's  was  worse ;  more  bitter,  and  with  less  of 
countenance,  even  in  show  or  shadow,  from  any  fact, 
or  insinuation  of  a  fact,  that  Scripture  suggests.  In 
his  "  Queen  Mab,"  he  gives  a  dreadful  portrait  of  God  ; 
and  that  no  question  may  arise,  of  what  God  ?  he  names 
aim ;  it  is  Jehovah.  He  asserts  his  existence ;  he 
affirms  him  to  be  "  an  almighty  God,  and  vengeful  as 
almighty."  He  goes  on  to  describe  him  as  the  "  omnip- 
otent fiend,"  who  found  "  none  but  slaves "  [Israel  in 
Egypt,  no  doubt]  to  be  "  his  tools,"  and  none  but  "  a 
murderer "  [Moses,  I  presume]  "  to  be  his  accomplice 
in  crime."  He  introduces  this  dreadful  Almighty  as 
speaking,  and  as  speaking  thus,  — 

"  From  an  eternity  of  idleness 
I,  Qod,  awoke  ;  in  seven  days'  toil  made  earth 
From  nothing  ;  rested  :  and  created  man." 


PERCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY.  2i*S 

But  man  he  hates  ;  and  he  goes  on  to  curse  him  ;  till  at 

the  intercession  of  "  the  murderer,"  who  is  electrified 
into  pity  for  the  human  race  by  the  very  horror  of  the 
divine   curses,  God   promises  to  send  his  son  —  only, 
however,  for  the  benefit  of  a  few.     This  son  appears 
the  poet  tells  us  that  — 

"  the  Incarnate  came  ;  hnmbly  lie  came, 

Veiling  his  horrible  Godhead  in  the  shape 

Of  man,  scorned  by  the  world,  his  name  unheard 

Save  by  the  rabble  of  his  native  town." 

The  poet  pursues  this  incarnate  God  as  a  teacher  of 
men ;  teaching,  "  in  semblance,"  justice,  truth,  and 
peace ;  but  underneath  all  this,  kindling  "  quenchless 
flames,"  which  eventually  were  destined 

"  to  satiate,  with  the  blood 

Of  truth  and  freedom,  his  malignant  soul." 

He  follows  him  to  his  crucifixion  ;  and  describes  him. 
whilst  hanging  on  the  cross,  as  shedding  malice  upon  t 
re  viler,  —  mclice  on  the  cross  ! 

"  A  smile  of  godlike  malice  reillumined 
His  fading  lineaments  :  " 

and  his  parting  breath  is  uttered  in  a  memorable  curse. 
This  atrocious  picture  of  the  Deity,  in  his  dealing* 
with  man,  both  pre-Christian  and  post-Christian,  ii 
ertainly  placed  in  the  mouth  of  the  wandering  Jew 
But  the  internal  evidence,  as  well  as  collateral  evidence 
from  without,  make  it  clear  that  the  Jew  (whose  version 
o(  scriptural  recorls  nobody  in  the  poem  disputes)  here 
represents  the  person  of  the  poet.  Shelley  had  opened 
lis  career  as  an  atheist ;  and  as  a  proselytizing  atheist. 


294  PERCY    BYSSHt    SHELLEY. 

But  he  wao  then  a  boy.  At  the  date  of  "  Queen  Mab," 
he  was  a  young  man.  And  we  now  find  him  advanced 
from  the  station  of  an  atheist  to  the  more  intellectual 
one  of  a  believer  in  God  and  in  the  mission  of  Christ ; 
but  of  one  who  fancied  himself  called  upon  to  defy  and 
to  hate  both,  in  so  far  as  they  had  revealed  their  rela- 
tions to  man. 

Mr.  Gilfillan*  thinks  that  "  Shelley  was  far  too 
harshly  treated  in  his  speculative  boyhood ; "  and  it 
strikes  him  "  that,  had  pity  and  kind-hearted  expostula- 
tion been  tried,  instead  of  reproach  and  abrupt  expulsion, 
they  might  he  «  weaned  him  from  the  dry  dugs  of 
Atheism  to  the  milky  breast  oV  the  faith  and  "  worship  of 
sorrow  ;  "  and  the  touching  spectacle  had  been  renewed, 
of  the  demoniac  sitting,  "  clothed,  and  in  his  right 
mind,"  at  the  feet  of  Jesus.  I  am  not  of  that  opinion  ; 
and  it  is  an  opinion  which  seems  to  question  the  sincerity 
of  Shelley,  —  that  quality  which  in  him  was  deepest,  so 
as  to  form  the  basis  of  his  nature,  —  if  we  allow  our- 
selves to  think  that,  by  personal  irritation,  he  had  been 
piqued  into  infidelity,  or  that  by  flattering  conciliation 
he  could  have  been  bribed  back  into  a  profession  of 
Christianity.  Like  a  wild  horse  of  the  pampas,  he 
would  have  thrown  up  his  heels,  and  whinnied  his  dis- 
dain of  any  man  coming  to  catch  him  with  a  bribe  of 
oats.  He  had  a  constant  vision  of  a  manger  and  a 
halter  in  the  rear  of  all  such  caressmg  tempters,  once 
having  scented  the  gales  of  what  he  thought  perfect 
freedom,  from  the  lawless  desert.  His  feud  with  Chris- 
danity  was  a  craze  derived  from  some  early  wnrench  of 


•  "  Gallery  of  Literary  Portraita." 


PEBCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY.  395 

118  understanding,  ana  made  obstinate  to  the  degree  in 
wtiich  we  find  it,  from  having  rooted  itself  in  certain 
combinations  of  ideas  that,  once  coalescing,  could  not 
be  shaken  loose ;  such  as,  that  Christianity  under- 
propped the  corruptions  of  the  earth,  in  the  shape  of 
wicked  governments  that  might  else  have  been  over* 
thrown,  or  of  wicked  priesthoods  that,  but  for  the 
shelter  of  shadowy  and  spiritual  terrors,  must  have 
trembled  before  those  whom  they  overawed.  Kings 
that  were  clothed  in  bloody  robes ;  dark  hierarchies 
that  scowled  upon  the  poor  children  of  the  soil ;  these 
objects  took  up  a  permanent  station  in  the  background 
of  Shelley's  imagination,  not  to  be  dispossessed  more 
than  the  phantom  of  Banquo  from  the  festival  of  Mac- 
beth, and  composed  a  towering  Babylon  of  mystery 
that,  to  his  belief,  could  not  have  flourished  under  any 
umbrage  less  vast  than  that  of  Christianity.  Such 
was  tne  inextricable  association  of  images  that  domi- 
neered over  Shelley's  mind ;  such  was  the  hatred 
which  he  built  upon  that  association,  —  an  association 
casual  and  capricious,  yet  fixed  and  petrified  as  if  by 
frost.  Can  we  imagine  the  case  of  an  angel  touched 
by  lunacy  ?  Have  we  ever  seen  the  spectacle  of  a 
human  intellect,  exquisite  by  its  functions  of  creation, 
yet  in  one  chamber  of  its  shadowy  house  already  ruined 
before  the  light  of  manhood  had  cleansed  its  darkness  1 
Such  an  angel,  such  a  man,  —  if  ever  such  there 
were,  —  such  a  lunatic  angel,  such  a  ruined  man,  was 
Shelley,  whilst  yet  standing  on  the  earliest  threshold 
>f  life. 

Mr.  GilfiUan,  whose  eye  is  quick  to  seize  the  lurk* 
ng  and  the  stf?althy  aspect  >f  things,  does  not  overlook 


296  PEKCY    BYSbHE    SHELLEY. 

the  absolute  midsummer  miadness  which  possessed 
Shelley  upon  the  subject  of  Christianity.  Shelley'i 
total  nature  was  altered  and  darkened  when  that  theme 
arose ;  transfiguration  fell  upon  him.  He  that  was  so 
gentle,  became  savage ;  he  that  breathed  by  the  very 
lungs  of  Christianity  —  that  was  so  merciful,  so  full  of 
tenderness  and  pity,  of  humility,  of  love  and  forgive- 
ness, then  raved  and  screamed  like  an  idiot  whom  once 
[  personally  knew,  when  offended  by  a  strain  of  heav- 
enly music  at  the  full  of  the  moon.  In  both  cases,  it 
•vas  the  sense  of  perfect  beauty  revealed  under  the 
•ense  of  morbid  estrangement.  This  it  is,  as  I  pre- 
sume, which  Mr.  GilfiUan  alludes  to  in  the  following 
passage  (p.  104) :  "  On  all  other  subjects  the  wisest 
of  the  wise,  the  gentlest  of  the  gentle,  the  bravest  of 
tne  brave,  yet,  when  ome  topic  was  introduced,  he  be- 
came straightway  insane ;  his  eyes  glared,  his  voice 
screamed,  his  hand  vibrated  frenzy."  But  Mr.  Gilfil- 
Jan  is  entirely  in  the  wrong  when  he  countenances  the 
notion  that  harsh  treatment  had  any  concern  in  riveting 
the  fanaticism  of  Shelley.  On  the  contrary,  he  met 
with  an  indulgence  to  the  first  manifestation  of  his 
anti-Christian  madness,  better  suited  to  the  goodness 
»f  the  lunatic  than  to  the  pestilence  of  his  lunacy.  It 
was  at  Oxford  that  this  earliest  explosion  of  Shelleyism 
occurred ;  and  though,  with  respect  to  secrets  of  prison- 
louses,  and  to  discussions  that  proceed  "  with  closed 
I'oors,"  there  is  always  a  danger  of  being  misinformed 
1  believe,  from  the  uniformity  of  such  accounts  as  have 
reached  myself,  that  the  following  hrief  of  the  matte 
may  be  relied  on.  Shelley,  being  a  venerable  sage  ol 
tutteen,  or  rather  less,  came  to  the  resr  lution  that  he 


PERCY    BVSSHE    SHELLEY.  297 

tYould  convert,  and  that  it  was  his  solemn  ^lut\'  to  con 
vert,  the  universal  Chri>tian  church  to  Atheism  or  to 
Pantheism,  no  great  matter  which.  But,  as  such  large 
undertakings  require  time,  twenty  months,  suppose,  or 
even  two  years,  —  for  you  know,  reader,  that  a  rail- 
way requires  on  an  average  little  less,  —  Shelley  vas 
determined  to  obey  no  impulse  of  youthful  rashness. 
O  no !  Down  with  presumption,  down  with  levity, 
down  with  boyish  precipitation  !  Changes  of  religion 
are  awful  things  ,  people  must  have  time  to  think.  He 
would  move  slowly  and  discreetly.  So  first  he  wrote 
a  pamphlet,  clearly  and  satisfactorily  explaining  the 
necessity  of  being  an  atheist ;  and  with  his  usual  ex- 
emplary courage  (for,  seriously,  he  was  the  least  fedse 
of  human  creatures),  Shelley  put  his  name  to  the 
pamphlet,  and  the  name  of  his  college.  His  ultimate 
object  was  to  accomplish  a  general  apostasy  in  the 
Christian  church  of  whatever  name.  But  for  one  six 
months,  it  was  quite  enough  if  he  caused  a  revolt  in 
the  Church  of  England.  And  as,  before  a  great  naval 
,ction,  when  the  enemy  is  approaching,  you  throw  a 
ong  shot  or  two  by  way  of  trying  his  range,  —  on  that 
principle  Shelley  had  thrown  out  his  tract  in  Oxford. 
Oxford  formed  the  advanced  squadron  of  the  English 
Ohurch  *  and,  by  way  of  a  coup  d'essai,  though  irj 
Itself  v<.  bagatelle,  what  if  he  should  begin  with  con- 
verting Oxford  ?  To  make  any  beginning  at  all  is  one 
half  the  battle  ;  or,  as  a  writer  in  this  magazine  [June, 
1845]  suggests,  a  good  deal  more  To  speak  seriously, 
there  is  something  even  thus  far  in  the  boyish  presumjv 
ion  of  Shelley  not  altogether  without  nobility.  He 
affronted    the   armies   of  Cnristendom.     Had    it  been 


298  PERCY    BYSSHE   SHELLEY. 

possible  for  him  to  be  jesting,  it  would  not  have  beer 
noble.  But  here,  even  in  the  most  monstrous  of  his 
undertakings,  here,  as  always,  he  was  perfectly  sin 
cere  and  single-minded.  Satisfied  that  Atheism  was 
the  sheet-anchor  of  the  world,  he  was  not  the  person 
to  speak  by  halves.  Being  a  boy,  he  attacked  those 
(upon  a  pomt  the  most  sure  to  irritate)  who  were  gray; 
having  no  station  in  society,  he  flew  at  the  throats  of 
n^ne  but  those  who  had;  weaker  than  an  infant  for 
ihe  i?urpose  before  him,  he  planted  his  fist  m  the  face 
of  a  giant,  saying,  "  Take  that,  you  devil,  and  that, 
and  that."  The  pamphlet  had  been  published ;  and 
though  an  undergraduate  of  Oxford  is  not  (technically 
speaking)  a  member  of  the  university  as  a  responsible 
corporation,  still  he  bears  a  near  relation  to  it.  And 
the  heads  of  colleges  felt  a  disagreeable  summons  to 
an  extra  meeting.  There  are  in  Oxford  five-and-twenty 
colleges,  to  say  nothing  of  halls.  Frequent  and  full 
the  heads  assembled  in  Golgotha,  a  well-known  Oxonian 
chamber,  which,  being  interpreted  (as  scriptu rally  we 
know),  is  "  the  place  of  a  skull,"  and  must,  therefore, 
naturally  be  the  place  of  a  head.  There  the  heads  met 
to  deliberate.  What  was  to  be  done  ?  Most  of  them 
were  inclined  to  mercy :  to  proceed  at  all  —  was  to  pro- 
ceed to  extremities ;  and  (generally  speaking)  to  expel 
a  man  from  Oxford,  is  to  rum  his  prospects  in  any  of 
the  liberal  professions.     Not,  therefore,  from  considera- 

ion  for  Shelley's  position  in  society,  but  on  the  kindesi 
motives  of  forbearance  towards  one  so  young,  the  heada 
decided  for  declining  all  notice  of  the  pamphlet.     Level 

ed  at  them,  it  was  not  specially  addressed  to  them ;  and 
tmongst  the  infinite  children  bom  every  morning  frore 


PEBCi;    BYSSHE    SHELLEY.  299 

{hat  mightiest  of  mothers,  the  press,  why  should  Gol- 
gotha be  supposed  to  have  known  anything,  otficially, 
of  this  little  brat  ?  That  evasion  might  suit  ^me  peo- 
ple, but  not  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley.  There  was  a  flaw 
(was  there  ? )  in  his  process ;  his  pleading  could  not, 
regularly,  come  up  before  the  court.  Very  well-^ 
he  would  heal  that  defect  immediately.  So  he  sent 
his  pamphlet,  with  five-and-twenty  separate  letters, 
addressed  to  the  five-and-twenty  heads  of  colleges  in 
Golgotha  assembled ;  courteously  "  inviting "  all  and 
every  of  them  to  notify,  at  his  earliest  convenience, 
his  adhesion  to  the  enclosed  unanswerable  arguments 
for  Atheism.  Upon  this,  it  is  undeniable  that  Gol- 
gotha looked  black ;  and,  after  certain  formalities, 
"  invited "  P.  B.  Shelley  to  consider  himself  expelled 
from  the  University  of  Oxford.  But,  if  this  were 
harsh,  how  would  Mr.  Gilfillan  have  had  them  to  pro- 
ceed ?  Already  they  had  done,  perhaps,  too  much  m 
the  way  of  forbearance.  There  were  many  men  in 
Oxford  who  knew  the  standing  of  Shelley's  family. 
Already  it  was  whispered  that  any  man  of  obscure 
connections  would  have  been  visited  for  his  Atheism, 
whether  writing  to  Golgotha  or  not.  And  this  whisper 
would  have  strengthened,  had  any  further  neglect  been 
shown  to  formal  letters,  which  requested  a  formal 
answer.  The  authorities  of  Oxford,  deeply  responsible 
♦o  the  nation  in  a  matter  of  so  much  peril,  could  not 
i.Bve  acted  otherwise  than  they  did.  They  were  not 
severe.  The  severity  was  extorted  and  imposed  by 
Shelley,  But,  on  the  other  hana  in  some  palliation 
»f  Shelley's  conduct,  it  ought  to  be  noticed  that  he  is 
mfairly  placed,  by  the  undisting^uishing,  on  the  manld 


300  PERCY    BYSSHE    SH£LLET 

Station  of  an  ordinary  Oxford  student.  The  under* 
graduates  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  are  not  "  boys,"  as 
a  considferable  proportion  must  be,  for  good  reasons 
in  other  universities,  —  the  Scottish  universities,  for  in- 
fitance,  of  Glasgow  and  St.  Andrews,  and  many  of  those 
on  the  continent.  Few  of  the  English  students  even 
6egin  their  residence  before  eighteen ;  and  the  laigei 
proportion  are  at  leeist  twenty.  Whereas  Shelley  was 
really  a  boy  at  this  era,  and  no  man.  He  had  entered 
on  his  sixteenth  year,  and  he  was  still  in  tho  earliest 
part  of  his  academic  career,  when  his  obstinate  and 
reiterated  attempt  to  inoculate  the  university  with  a 
disease  that  he  fancied  indispensable  to  their  mental 
health,  caused  his  expulsion. 

I  imagine  that  Mr.  Giifillan  will  find  himself  compelled, 
hereafter,  not  less  by  his  own  second  thoughts,  than  by 
the  murmurs  of  some  amongst  his  readers,  to  revise  that 
selection  of  memorial  traits,  whether  acts  or  habits,  by 
which  he  seeks  to  bring  Shelley,  as  a  familiar  presence, 
within  the  field  of  ocular  apprehension.  The  acts 
selected,  unless  characteristic, — the  habits  selected,  un- 
less representative,  —  must  be  absolutely  impertinent  to 
the  true  identification  of  the  man  ;  and  most  of  those 
rehearsed  by  Mr.  Giifillan,  unless  where  they  happen  to 
be  merely  accidents  of  bodily  constitution,  are  such  as 
all  of  us  would  be  sorry  to  suppose  naturally  belongmg 
to  Shelley.  To  "  rush  out  of  the  room  in  terror,  as  his 
iwild  imagination  painted  to  him  a  pair  of  eyes  in  a 
ady's  breast,"  is  not  so  much  a  movement  of  poetic 
frenzy,  as  of  typhus  fever  —  to  "  terrify  an  old  lady  out 
af  her  wits,"  by  assuming,  in  a  stage-coach,  the  situation 
of  %  regal  sufferei  from  Shakspeare,  is  not  eccentricitj 


PERCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY.  301 

lo  much  as  painful  discourtesy  —  and  to  request  of 
Rowland  Hill,  a  man  most  pious  and  sincere,  "  the  use 
of  Surrey  chapel,"  as  a  theatre  for  publishing  infidelity, 
would  have  been  so  thoroughly  the  act  of  a  heartless 
coxcomb,  that  I,  for  one,  cannot  bring  myself  to  believe 
It  an  authentic  anecdote.  Not  that  I  doubt  of  Shelley's 
violating  at  times  his  own  better  nature,  as  every  man 
is  capable  of  doing,  under  youth  too  fervid,  wine  too 
potent,  and  companions  too  misleading ;  but  it  strikes  me 
that,  during  Shelley's  very  earliest  youth,  the  mere  acci- 
dent of  Rowland  Hill's  being  a  man  well-born  and  aris- 
tocratically connected,  yet  sacrificing  these  advantages 
to  what  he  thought  the  highest  of  services,  spiritual 
service  on  behalf  of  poor  laboring  men,  would  have  laid 
a  pathetic  arrest  upon  any  impulse  of  fun  in  one  who, 
with  the  very  same  advantages  of  birth  and  position, 
had  the  same  deep  reverence  for  the  rights  of  the  poor. 
Willing,  at  all  times,  to  forget  his  own  pretensions  in 
the  presence  of  those  who  seemed  powerless — willing 
in  a  degree  that  seems  sublime  —  Shelley  could  not  but 
have  honored  the  same  nobility  of  feeling  in  another. 
And  Rowland  Hill,  by  his  guileless  simplicity,  had  a 
separate  hold  upon  a  nature  so  childlike  as  Shelley's.  He 
was  full  of  love  to  mar  ;  so  was  Shelley.  He  was  full 
of  humility  ;  so  was  Shelley.  Difference  of  creed,  how- 
tver  vast  the  interval  which  it  created  between  the  men. 
could  not  have  hid  from  Shelley's  eye  the  close  approxi- 
mation  of  their  natures.  Infidel  by  his  intellect,  Shelley 
was  a  Christian  in  the  tendencies  of  his  heart.  As  to 
Qis  "  lying  asleep  on  the  hearth-rug,  with  his  small  round 
lead  thrust  almost  into  the  "ery  fire,"  this,  like  his 
basking;  in  the  hottest  beams  of  an  Italian  sun,"  illus 


502  PERCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY. 

trates  nothing  but  his  physical  temperament.  That  he 
should  be  seen  "  devouring  large  pieces  of  bread  amid 
his  profound  abstractions,"  simply  recalls  to  my  eye  some 
hundred  thousands  of  children  in  the  streets  of  great 
cities,  Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  London,  whom  I  am  daily 
detecting  in  the  same  unaccountable  practice  ;  and  yet 
probably,  with  very  little  abstraction  to  excuse  it ;  whilst 
his  "  endless  cups  of  tea,"  in  so  tea-drinking  a  land  as 
ours,  have  really  ceased  to  offer  the  attractions  of  novelty 
which,  eighty  years  ago,  in  the  reign  of  Dr.  Johnson, 
and  under  a  higher  price  of  tea,  they  might  have  secured. 
Such  habits,  however,  are  inofTensive,  if  not  particularly 
mysterious,  nor  particularly  significant.  But  that,  in 
defect  of  a  paper  boat,  Shelley  should  launch  upon  the 
Serpentine  a  fifty  pound  bank  note,  seems  to  my  view 
an  act  of  childishness,  or  else  (which  is  worse)  an  act 
of  empty  ostentation,  not  likely  to  proceed  from  one  who 
generally  exhibited  in  his  outward  deportment  a  sense 
of  true  dignity.  He  who,  through  his  family,**  con- 
nected himself  with  that  "  spirit  without  spot "  (as  Shelley 
calls  him  in  the  "  Adonais  "),  Sir  Philip  Sidney  (a  man 
how  like  in  gentleness,  and  in  faculties  of  mind,  to  him- 
self ! )  —  he  that,  by  consequence,  connected  himself 
with  that  later  descendant  of  Penshurst,  the  noble 
martyr  of  freedom,  Algernon  Sidney,  could  not  have 
degraded  himself  by  a  pride  so  mean  as  any  which  roots 
itself  in  wealth.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  anecdote  cf 
his  repeating  Dr.  Johnson's  benign  act,  by  "  lifting  a  poor 
houseless  outcast  upon  his  back,  and  carrying  her  to  a 
place  of  refuge,"  I  read  so  strong  a  character  of  interna 
probability,  that  it  would  be  gratifying  to  know  up(» 
^hat  external  testimony  it  rests. 


PERCY    B^-^SHE    SHELLEY.  303 

The  life  of  Shelley,  according  to  the  remark  of  Mr. 
UilfiUan,  was  "  among  the  most  romantic  in  literary 
Btory."  Everything  was  romantic  in  his  ^hort  career , 
everything  wore  a  tragic  interest.  From  his  childhood 
he  moved  through  a  succession  of  afflictions.  Always 
craving  for  love,  loving  and  seeking  to  be  loved,  always 
he  was  destinea  to  reap  hatred  from  those  with  whom 
life  had  connected  him.  If  in  the  darkness  he  raised 
up  images  of  his  departed  hours,  he  would  behold  his 
family  disownmg  him,  and  the  home  of  his  infancy 
knowing  him  no  more ;  he  would  behold  his  magnificent 
university,  that,  under  happier  circumstances,  would  have 
gloried  in  his  genius,  rejecting  him  forever ;  he  would 
behold  his  first  wife,  whom  once  he  had  loved  passion- 
ately, through  calamities  arising  from  himself,  called 
away  to  an  early  and  tragic  death.  The  peace  after 
which  his  heart  panted  forever,  in  what  dreadful  contrast 
it  stood  to  the  eternal  contention  upon  which  his  restless 
intellect  or  accidents  of  position  threw  him  like  a  pas- 
sive victim !  It  seemed  as  if  not  any  choice  of  his,  but 
some  sad  doom  of  opposition  from  without,  forced  out, 
as  by  a  magnet,  struggles  of  frantic  resistance  from  him, 
which  as  gladly  he  would  have  evaded  as  ever  victim 
of  epilepsy  yearned  to  evade  his  convulsions  !  Gladly 
he  would  have  slept  in  eternal  seclusion,  whilst  eternally 
the  trump  summoned  him  to  battle.  In  storms  unwil« 
lingly  created  by  himself,  he  lived;  in  a  storm,  cited  by 
the  finger  of  God,  he  died. 

It  is  afTecting,  —  at  least  it  is  so  for  any  one  who 
oelieves  in  the  profound  sincerity  of  Shelley,  a  man 
(however  erring)  whom  neither  fear,  nor  hope,  nor  vanity, 
aor  hatred,  evet  seduced  into  falsehood,  or  even  into 


304  PEKCY    BYS<5HE    SHELLEY. 

dissimulation,  —  to  read  the  account  which  he  gives  ot 
a  revolution  occurring  in  his  own  mind  at  school :  sc 
early  did  his  struggles  begin !  It  is  in  verse,  and  forms 
part  of  those  beautiful  stanzas  addressed  to  his  secoal 
wife,  which  he  prefixed  to  "The  Revolt  of  Islam.* 
Five  or  six  of  these  stanzas  may  be  quoted  with  a  cer 
tainty  of  pleasing  many  readers,  whilbt  they  throw  light 
on  the  early  condition  of  Shelley's  feelings,  and  of  hja 
early  anticipations  with  regard  to  the  promises  aud  the 
menaces  of  life. 

"  Thoughts  of  great  deeds  were  mine,  dear  friend,  when  firat 
The  clouds  which  wrap  this  world,  from  youth  did  pass. 
I  do  remember  well  the  hour  which  burst 
My  spirit's  sleep  ;  a  fresh  May-dawn  it  was. 
When  I  walked  forth  upon  the  glittering  grass. 
And  wept  —  I  knew  not  why  ;  until  there  rose. 
From  the  near  school-room,  voices  that,  alas  ' 
Were  but  one  echo  from  a  world  of  woes  — 

The  harsh  and  grating  strife  of  tyrants  and  of  foes. 

And  then  I  clasped  my  hands,  and  looked  around  — 
(But  none  was  near  to  mock  my  streaming  eyes, 
Which  poured  their  warm  drops  on  the  sunny  ground)  — 
So  without  shame  I  spake  —  I  will  be  wise. 
And  just,  and  free,  and  mild,  if  in  me  lies 
Such  power  ;  for  I  grow  weary  to  behold 
The  selfish  and  the  strong  still  tyrannize 
Without  reproach  or  check.     I  then  controlled 
My  tears  ;  my  heart  grew  calm  ;  and  I  was  meek  and  bold« 

And  from  that  hour  did  I  with  earnest  thought 
Heap  knowledge  from  forbidden  mines  of  lore : 
Yet  notning,  that  my  tyrants  knew  or  taught, 
I  cared  to  learn  ,  out  from  that  secret  store 
Wrought  linked  armor  for  my  soul,  before 
It  might  walk  forth  to  war  among  mankind  . 


PERCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY.  805 

111  US  power  and  hope  were  strengthened  more  and  more 
Within  me,  till  there  came  upon  my  mind 
h.  sense  of  loneliness,  a  thirst  with  which  I  pined 

Alas,  that  love  should  be  a  blight  and  snare 
To  those  who  seek  all  sympathies  in  one  !  — 
Such  once  I  sought  in  vain  ;  then  black  despair. 
The  shadow  of  a  starless  night,  was  thrown 
Over  the  world  in  which  I  moved  alone  :  — 
Yet  never  found  I  one  not  false  to  me, 
Hard  hearts  and  cold,  like  weights  of  icy  stone 
Which  crushed  and  withered  mine,  that  could  not  l-e 
Aught  but  a  lifeless  clog,  until  revived  by  thee. 

Thou,  friend,  whose  presence  on  my  wintry  heart 
Fell,  like  bright  spring  upon  some  herbless  plain  , 
How  beautiful  and  calm  and  free  thou  wert 
In  thy  young  wisdom,  when  the  mortal  chain 
Of  Custom^  thou  didst  burst  and  rend  in  twain. 
And  walk'd  as  free  as  light  the  clouds  among. 
Which  many  an  envious  slave  then  breathed  in  vain 
From  his  dim  dungeon,  and  my  spirit  sprung 
To  meet  thee  from  the  woes  which  had  begirt  it  long 

No  more  alone  through  the  world's  wilderness. 
Although  I  trod  the  paths  of  high  intent, 
I  journeyed  now  ;  no  more  companionless. 
Where  solitude  is  like  despair,  I  went 

Now  has  descended  a  serener  hour  ; 
And,  with  inconstant  fortune,  friends  return  : 
Though  suffering  leaves  the  knowledge  and  the  power 
Which  says  —  Let  scorn  be  not  repaid  with  scorn. 
And  from  thy  side  two  gentle  babes  are  born 
To  fill  our  home  with  smile&  ,  and  thus  are  we 
Most  fortunate  beneath  life's  beaming  mom  ; 
And  these  delights  and  thou  have  been  to  me 
The  parents  of  the  song  I  consecrate  to  tbfi<f»  " 


306  PERCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY 

My  own  attention  was  first  drawn  to  Shelley  by  tn*" 
report  of  his  Oxford  labors  as  a  missionary  in  thf 
Bemce  of  infidelity.  Abstracted  from  the  absolute 
sincerity  and  simplicity  which  governed  that  boyish 
movement,  qualities  which  could  not  be  known  to  a 
stranger,  or  even  suspected  in  the  midst  of  so  much 
extravagance,  there  was  nothing  in  the  Oxford  reports 
of  him  to  create  any  interest  beyond  that  of  wonder 
at  his  folly  and  presumption  in  pushing  to  such  ex- 
treniity  what,  naturally,  all  people  viewed  as  an 
elaborate  jest.  Some  curiosity,  however,  even  at  that 
time,  must  have  gathered  aliout  his  name ;  for  I  re- 
member seeing,  in  London,  a  little  Indian  ink  sketch 
of  him  in  the  academic  costume  of  Oxford.  The 
sketch  tallied  pretty  well  with  a  verbal  description 
which  I  had  heard  of  him  m  some  company,  namely, 
that  he  looked  like  an  elegant  and  slender  flower, 
whose  head  drooped  from  being  surcharged  with  rain. 
This  gave,  to  the  chance  observer,  an  impression  that 
he  was  tainted,  even  in  his  external  deportment,  by 
some  excess  of  sickly  sentimentalism,  from  which  I 
believe  that,  in  all  stages  of  his  life,  he  was  remark- 
ably free.  Between  two  and  three  years  after  this 
period,  which  was  that  of  his  expulsion  from  Oxford, 
he  married  a  beautiful  girl  named  Westbrook.  She 
was  respectably  connected  ;  but  had  not  moved  in  a 
rank  corresponding  to  Shelley's ;  and  that  accident 
brought  him  into  my  own  neighborhood  For  hi? 
family,  already  estranged  from  him.  were  now  thor- 
oughly irritated  by  what  they  regarded  as  a  mesalliance 
«ind  withdrew,  or  greatly  reduced,  his  pecuniar}'  allow 
»nces.     Such,  at  least,  was  the  story  current.     In  thi» 


PERCY    BYSSHE    SMFLLEY.  30? 

Bmlmrrassment,  his  wife's  father  made  over  to  him  an 
annual  income  of  £200 ;  and,  as  economy  had  become 
miportant,  the  youthful  pair  —  both,  in  fact,  still 
children  —  came  down  to  the  Lakes,  suppceing  this 
region  of  Cumberland  and  Westmoreland  to  be  a 
se(|uestered  place,  which  it  vxis,  for  eight  months  in 
the  year,  and  also  to  be  a  cheap  place — which  it  was 
not.  Another  motive  to  this  choice  arose  with  the 
then  Duke  of  Norfolk.  He  was  an  old  friend  of 
Shelley's  family,  and  generously  refused  to  hear  a 
word  of  the  young  man's  errors,  except  where  he 
could  do  anything  to  reHeve  him  from  their  conse- 
quences. His  grace  possessed  the  beautiful  estate  of 
Grobarrow  Park  on  Ulleswater,  and  other  estates  of 
greater  extent  in  the  same  two  counties;"  his  own 
agents  he  had  directed  to  furnish  any  accommodations 
that  might  meet  Shelley's  views  ;  and  he  had  written 
to  some  gentlemen  amongst  his  agricultural  friends  in 
Cumberland,  requesting  them  to  pay  such  neighborly 
attentions  to  the  solitary  young  people  as  circum- 
stances might  place  in  their  power.  This  bias,  being 
impressed  upon  Shelley's  wanderings,  naturally  brought 
him  to  Keswick  as  the  most  central  and  the  largest 
of  the  little  towns  dispersed  amongst  the  lakes 
Southey,  made  aware  of  the  interest  taken  in  Shelley 
by  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  with  his  usual  kindness 
immediately  called  upon  him ;  and  the  .adies  of 
Sauthey's  lamily  subsequently  made  an  early  call 
upon  Mrs.  Shelley.  One  of  them  mentioned  to  me 
us  occurring  in  this  first  visit  an  amusing  expression 
af  the  youthful  matron,  which  four  years  later,  when 
I   heard  of  her  o^loomy  end,   recalled   with   the   force 


508  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY. 

jf  a  pathetic  contrast,  that  icy  arrest  then  chahimg  up 
her  youthful  feet  forever.  The  Shelleys  had  been 
induced  by  one  of  their  new  friends  to  take  part  of  a 
nouse  standing  about  half  a  mile  out  of  Keswick,  ov 
the  Penritfi  road;  more,  I  believe,  in  that  friend'k 
intention  for  the  sake  of  bringing  them  easily  within 
his  hospitalities,  than  for  any  beauty  in  the  place 
There  was,  however,  a  pretty  garden  attached  to  it. 
And  whilst  walking  in  this,  one  of  the  Southey  party 
asked  Mrs.  Shelley  if  ihe  garden  had  been  let  with 
their  part  of  the  house.  "  O,  no,"  she  replied,  "  the 
garden  is  not  ours  ;  but  then,  you  know,  the  people 
let  us  run  about  in  it  whenever  Percy  and  I  are  tired 
of  sitting  in  the  house."  The  natveti  of  this  expres- 
sion "run  about,"  contrasting  so  picturesquely  with 
the  intermitting  efforts  of  the  girlish  wife  at  support- 
ing a  matron-like  gravity,  now  that  she  was  doing  the 
honors  of  her  house  to  married  ladies,  caused  all  the 
party  to  smile.  And  me  it  caused  profoundly  to  sigh, 
S)ui  years  later,  when  the  gloomy  death  of  this  young 
rreature,  now  frozen  in  a  distant  grave,  threw  back 
my  remembrance  uf)on  her  fawn-like  playfulness, 
which  unconsciously  to  herself,  the  girlish  phrase  of 
run  about  so  naturally  betrayed. 

At  that  time  I  had  a  cottage  myself  in  Grasmere, 
just  thirteen  miles  distant  from  Shelley's  new  abode. 
As  he  had  then  written  nothing  of  any  interest,  I  had 
no  motive  for  calling  upon  him,  except  by  way  of 
showing  any  little  attentions  in  my  power  to  a  brothel 
Oxonian,  and  to  a  man  of  letters.  These  attentiona 
ai'ieed,  he  might  have  claimed  simp)y  in  the  characte 
>    a   neighbor      For   as  men    livine   on    the  coast  o 


PERCY    BVSSH£    SUELLEY.  309 

Mayo  or  Galway  are  apt  to  consider  the  dwellers  on 
the  sea-board  of  North  America  in  the  light  of  next- 
door  neighbors,  divided  only  by  a  party-wall  of  crystal, 
—  and  what  if  accidentally  three  thousand  miles 
thick  ?  —  on  the  same  principle  we  amongst  the 
•lender  population  of  this  lake  region,  and  wherever 
10  ascent  intervened  between  two  parties  higher  than 
Dunmail  Raise  and  the  spurs  of  Helvellyn,  were  apt 
tO  take  with  each  other  the  privileged  tone  of  neigh- 
Dors.  Some  neighborly  advantages  I  might  certainly 
have  placed  at  Shelley's  disposal  —  Grasmere,  for 
instance,  itself,  which  tempted  at  that  time*  by  a 
beauty  that  had  not  been  sullied ;  Wordsworth,  who 
then  lived  in  Grasmere  ;  Elleray  and  Professor  Wilson, 
nine  miles  further ;  finally,  my  own  library,  which, 
being  rich  in  the  wickedest  of  German  speculations, 
would  naturally  have  been  more  to  Shelley's  taste 
than  the  Spanish  library  of  Southey. 

But  all  these  temptations  were  negfatived  for  Shelley 
by  his  sudden  departure.  Off  he  went  in  a  hurry; 
but  why  he  went,  or  whither  he  went,  I  did  not  inquire  ; 
not  guessing  the  interest  which  he  would  create  in 
my  mind,  six  years  later,  by  his  "  Revolt  of  Islam." 
A  life  of  Shelley,  in  a  continental  edition  of  his 
works,  says  that  he  went  to  Edinburgh  and  to  Ireland. 
Some  time  after,  we  at  the  lakes  heard  that  he  was 
living  in  Wales.  Apparently  he  had  the  instinct 
Within  him  of  his  own  Wandering  Jew  for  eternal 
reatlessness.  But  events  werp  now  hurrying  upon  his 
heart  of  hearts.  Within  less  than  ten  years  the  whole 
aii'ear  of  his  life  was  destined  to  revolve.  Within 
ihat  space,  he  had  the  whole  burden  of  life  and  death 


510  PERCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY. 

to  exhaust ;  he  had  all  his  suffering  to  suffer,  and  all 
his  work  to  work. 

[n  about  four  years  his  first  marriage  was  dissolved 
by  the  death  of  his  wife.  She  had  brought  to  Shelley 
two  children.  But  feuds  arose  between  them,  owing 
to  incompatible  habits  of  mind.  They  parted.  A.id 
It  is  one  chief  misery  of  a  beautiful  young  woman, 
separated  from  her  natural  protector,  that  her  desolate 
situation  attracts  and  stimulates  the  calumnies  of  the 
malicious.  Stung  by  these  calumnies,  and  oppressed 
(as  I  have  understood)  by  the  loneliness  of  her  abode, 
perhaps  also  by  the  delirium  of  fever,  she  threw  her- 
self into  a  pond,  and  was  drowned.  The  name  under 
which  she  first  enchanted  all  eyes,  and  sported  as  the 
most  playful  of  nymph-like  girls,  is  now  forgotten 
amongst  men  ;  and  that  other  name,  for  a  brief  period 
her  ambition  and  her  glory,  is  inscribed  on  her  grave- 
stone as  the  name  under  which  she  wept  and  she 
despaired,  —  suffered  and  was  buried, — turned  away 
even  from  the  faces  of  her  children,  and  sought  a 
hiding-place  in  darkness. 

After  this  dreadful  event,  an  anonymous  life  of 
Shelley  asserts  that  he  was  for  some  time  deranged. 
Pretending  to  no  private  and  no  circumstantial  ac- 
quaintance with  the  case,  I  cannot  say  how  that  really 
ivas.  There  is  a  great  difficulty  besetting  all  sketches 
of  lives  so  steeped  in  trouble  as  was  Shelley's.  If 
you  have  a  confidential  knowledge  of  the  case,  as  a 
dear  friend  privileged  to  stand  by  the  bed-side  of 
raving  grief,  how  base  to  use  such  advantages  of 
Dasition  for  the  gratification  of  a  fugitive  curiosity 
m  strangers  !     If  you  have   no   such  knowledge,  how 


FEHCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY.  311 

ittle  qualified  you  must  be  for  tracing  the  life  witli 
,he  truth  of  sympathy,  or  for  judging  it  with  the  truth 
of  charity !  To  me  it  appears,  from  the  peace  of 
mind  which  Shelley  is  reported  afterwards  to  have 
recovered  for  a  time,  that  he  could  not  have  had  to 
reproach  himself  with  any  harshness  or  neglect  as 
contributing  to  the  shocking  catastrophe.  Neither 
ought  any  reproach  to  rest  upon  the  memory  of  this 
first  wife,  as  respects  her  relation  to  Shelley.  Non- 
conformity of  tastes  might  easily  rise  between  two 
parties,  without  much  blame  to  either,  when  one  of 
the  two  had  received  from  nature  an  intellect  and  a 
temperament  so  dangerously  eccentric,  and  constitu- 
tionally carried,  by  delicacy  so  exquisite  of  organiza- 
tion, to  eternal  restlessness  and  irritability  of  nerves, 
if  not  absolutely  at  times  to  lunacy. 

About  three  years  after  this  tragfic  event,  Shelley, 
m  company  with  his  second  wife,  the  daughter  of  God- 
win, and  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  passed  over  for  a  third 
time  to  the  Continent,  from  which  he  never  came  back. 
On  Monday,  July  8,  1822,  being  then  in  his  twenty- 
ninth  year,  he  was  returning  from  Leghorn  to  his  home 
at  Lerici,  in  a  schooner-rigged  boat  of  his  own,  twenty- 
four  feet  long,  eight  in  the  beam,  and  drawing  four 
feet  water.  His  companions  were  only  two,  —  Mr.  Wil- 
'iams,  formerly  of  the  Eighth  Dragoons,  and  Charles 
Vivian,  an  English  seaman  in  Shelley's  service.  The 
run  homewards  would  not  have  occupied  more  than 
six  or  eight  hours.  But  the  Gulf  of  Spezia  is  pecu- 
liarly dangerous  for  small  craft  in  bad  weather ;  and 
unfortunately  a  squall  of  about  one  hour's  duration 
jumo  on,  the  wind  at  the  sane  time  shifting  so  as  tc 


Hi  PERCY    BYSSH£    SHEI.LE1. 

olow  exactly  in  the  teeth  of  the  course  to  Lericu 
From  the  interesting  narrative  drawn  up  by  Mr.  Tre- 
.awney,  well  known  at  that  time  for  his  connection 
with  the  Greek  Revolution,  it  seems  that  for  eight  days 
the  fate  of  the  boat  was  unknown;  and  during  that 
time  couriers  had  been  despatched  along  the  whole  line 
of  coast  between  Leghorn  and  Nice,  under  anxious 
hopes  that  the  voyagers  might  have  run  mto  some 
creek  for  shelter.  But  at  the  end  of  the  eight  days 
this  suspense  ceased.  Some  articles  belonging  to  Shel- 
ley's boat  had  previously  been  washed  ashore  :  these 
might  have  been  thrown  overboard ;  but  finally  the 
two  bodies  of  Shelley  and  Mr.  Williams  came  on  shore 
near  Via  Reggio,  about  four  miles  apart.  Both  were 
m  a  state  of  advanced  decomposition,  but  were  fully 
identified.  Vivian's  body  was  not  recovered  for  three 
weeks.  From  the  state  of  the  two  corpses,  it  had 
become  difficult  to  remove  them ;  and  they  were  there- 
fore burned  by  the  seaside,  on  funeral  pyres,  with 
the  classic  rites  of  paganism,  four  English  gentlemen 
hemg  present,  —  Capt.  Shenley  of  the  navy,  Mr.  Leigh 
Hunt,  Lord  Byron,  and  Mr.  Trelawney.  A  circum 
stance  is  added  by  Mr.  Gilfillan,  which  previous 
accounts  do  not  mention,  namely,  that  Shelley's  heart 
remained  unconsumed  by  the  fire ;  but  this  is  a  phe- 
nomenon that  has  repeatedly  occurred  at  judicial  deaths 
by  fire.  The  remains  of  Mr.  Williams,  when  col- 
lected from  the  fire,  were  conveyed  to  England;  bat 
Shelley's  were  buried  in  the  Protestant  burying-ground 
Rt  Borne,  not  far  from  a  child  of  his  own  and  Keata 
-he  poet.  It  is  remarkable  that  Shelley,  in  the  preface 
%  his  Adonais,  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  that  younn 


PERCY    BYSSIIE    SHELLEY.  313 

poet,  had  spoken  with  delight  of  this  cemetery, — as 
"  An  open  space  among  the  ruins  "  (of  ancient  Rome), 
"  covered  in  winter  with  violets  and  daisies ;  "  adding, 
"  It  might  make  one  in  love  with  death,  to  think  that 
oue  should  be  buried  in  so  sweet  a  place." 

I  have  allowed  myself  to  abridge  the  circumstances 
as  reported  by  Mr.  Trelawney  and  Mr.  Hunt,  partly 
on  the  consideration  that  three-and -twenty  years  have 
passed  since  the  event,  so  that  a  new  generation  has 
had  time  to  grow  up  —  not  feeling  the  interest  of  cmtf 
temporaries  in  Shelley,  and  generally,  therefore,  unac- 
quainted with  the  case ;  but  partly  for  the  purpose  of 
introducing  the  following  comment  of  Mr.  Gilfillan  on 
the  striking  points  of  a  catastrophe,  "  which  robbed 
the  world  of  this  strange  and  great  spirit,"  and  which 
secretly  tempts  men  to  superstitious  feelings,  even 
whilst  they  are  denying  them  :  — 

"Everybody  knows  that,  on  the  arrival  of  Leigh 
Hunt  in  Italy,  Shelley  hastened  to  meet  him.  During 
all  the  time  he  spent  in  Leghorn,  he  was  in  brilliant 
spirits  —  to  hmi  ever  a  sure  prognostic  of  coming  evil." 
[That  is,  in  the  Scottish  phrase,  he  was/ey.]  "  On  his 
return  to  his  home  and  family,  his  skiff  was  overtaken 
by  a  fearful  hurricane,  and  all  on  board  perished.  To 
a  gentleman,  who,  at  that  time,  was  with  a  glass  sur- 
veying the  sea,  the  scene  of  his  drowning  assumed  a 
very  striking  appearance.  A  great  many  vessels  were 
risible,  and  among  them  one  small  skiff,  which  at- 
tracted his  particular  attention.  Suddenly  a  dreadful 
storm,  attended  by  thunder  and  columns  of  lightning, 
I  wept  over  the  sea  and  eclipsed  the  prospect.  When 
t  had   passed   he    looked   agam.     The  larger   vessels 


314  PERCY    BYSSIIE    SHELLEY. 

were  all  safe,  riding  upon  the  swell;  the  skiff  onlv 
had  gone  down  forever.  And  in  that  skiff  was  Ala* 
tor  I***  Here  he  had  met  his  fate.  Wert  thou,  0 
religious  sea,  only  avenging  on  his  head  the  cause  of 
thy  denied  and  insulted  Deity  ?  Were  ye,  ye  ele- 
ments, in  your  courses,  commissioned  to  destroy  him  ? 
Ah  !  there  is  no  reply.  The  surge  is  silent ;  the  ele- 
ments have  no  voice.  In  the  eternal  councils  the  secret 
is  hid  of  the  reason  of  the  man's  death.  And  there, 
too,  rests  the  still  more  tremendous  secret  of  the  char- 
acter of  his  destiny."* 

The  last  remark  possibly  pursues  the  scrutiny  loo 
far ;  and,  conscious  that  it  tends  beyond  the  limits  of 
charity,  Mr.  Gilfillan  recalls  himseli  from  the  attempt 
to  fathom  the  unfathomable.  But  undoubtedly  the 
temptation  is  great,  in  minds  the  least  superstitious,  to 
read  a  significance,  and  a  silent  personality,  in  such  a 
fate  applied  to  such  a  defier  of  the  Christian  heavens. 
As  a  shepherd  by  his  dog  fetches  out  one  of  his  flock 
from  amongst  five  hundred,  so  did  the  holy  hurricane 
seem  to  fetch  out  from  the  multitude  of  sails  thai  one 
which  carried  him  that  hated  the  hopes  of  the  world; 
and  the  sea,  which  swelled  and  ran  down  within  an 
hour,  was  present  at  the  audit.  We  are  reminded 
forcibly  of  the  sublime  storm  in  the  wilderness  (at 
given  in  the  fourth  book  of  "  Paradise  Regained"), 
and  the  remark  upon  it  made  by  the  mysterious 
tempter  — 

"  This  tempest  at  this  desert  most  was  bent. 
Of  men  at  thee." 

Undoubtedly,  I  do  not  understand  Mr.  Gilfillan,  more 


reacY  bysshe  shellky.  SiS 

iian  myself,  to  read  a  "judgment "  in  this  catastrophe. 
But  there  is  a  solemn  appeal  to  the  thoughtful,  in 
a  death  of  so  much  terrific  grandeur  following  upon 
defiances  of  such  unparalleled  audacity.  ^schylus 
acknowledged  the  same  sense  of  mysterious  awe,  and 
all  antiquity  acknowledged  it,  in  the  story  of  Amphia* 
raus,«i 

Shelley,  it  must  be  remembered,  carried  his  irre- 
ligion  to  a  point  beyond  all  others.  Of  the  darkest 
beings  we  are  told,  that  they  "  believe  and  tremble  ; " 
but  Shelley  believed  and  hated;  and  his  defiances 
were  meant  to  show  that  he  did  not  tremble.  Yet, 
has  he  not  the  excuse  of  something  like  moTunnania 
I'pon  this  subject?  I  firmly  believe  it.  But  a  super- 
stition, old  as  the  world,  clings  to  the  notion,  thai 
words  of  deep  meaning,  uttered  even  by  lunatics  or  by 
idiots,  execute  themselves ;  and  that  also,  when  uttered 
in  presumption,  they  bring  round  their  own  retributive 
chastisements. 

On  the  other  hand,  however  shocked  at  Shelley's 
ebstinate  revolt  from  all  religious  sympathies  with  his 
fellow-men,  no  man  is  entitled  to  deny  the  admirable 
qualities  of  his  moral  nature,  which  were  as  striking 
as  his  genius.  Many  people  remarked  something  se- 
raphic in  the  expression  of  his  features ;  and  something 
seraphic  there  was  in  his  nature.  No  man  was  better 
|ualified  to  have  loved  Christianity ;  and  to  no  man, 
vesting  under  the  shadow  of  that  one  darkness,  would 
Christianity  have  said  more  gladly  —  talis  cum  sis 
utinam  noster  esses  '  Shel'.ey  would,  from  his  earliest 
manhood,  have  sacrificed  all  that  he  possessed  tr  aty 
comprehensive  purpose  of  good  for  the   race   of  man 


316  PERCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY. 

He  dismissed  all  injuries  and  insults  from  his  memory 
He  was  the  sincerest  and  the  most  truthful  of  human 
creatures.  He  was  also  the  purest.  If  he  denounced 
marriage  as  a  vicious  institution,  that  was  but  another 
phasis  of  the  partial  lunacy  which  affected  him  ;  for  to 
no  man  were  purity  and  fidelity  more  essential  ele- 
ments in  his  iiiea  of  real  love. 

I  agree,  therefore,  heartily  with  Mr.  GilfiUan,  in  pro- 
tecting against  the  thoughtless  assertion  of  some  writer 
in  The  Edinburgh  Review  —  that  Shelley  at  all  selected 
the  story  of  his  "  Cenci "  on  account  of  its  horrors,  or 
that  he  has  found  pleasure  in  dwelling  on  those  horrors. 
So  far  from  it,  he  has  retreated  so  entirely  from  the 
most  shocking  feature  of  the  story,  namely,  the  inces- 
tuous violence  of  Cenci  the  father,  as  actually  to  leave 
it  doubtful  whether  the  murder  were  in  punishment  of 
the  last  outrage  committed,  or  in  repulsion  of  a  menace 
continually  repeated.  The  true  motive  of  the  selection 
of  such  a  story  was  —  not  its  darkness,  but  (as  Mr. 
Gilfillan,  with  so  much  penetration,  perceives)  the  light 
which  fights  with  the  darkness :  Shelley  found  the 
whole  attraction  of  this  dreadful  tale  in  the  angelic 
nature  of  Beatrice,  as  revealed  in  the  portrait  of  her 
by  Guido.  Everybody  who  has  read  with  under 
standing  the  "  Wallenstein  "  of  Schiller,  is  aware  of  the 
repose  and  the  divine  relief  arising  upon  a  background 
of  so  much  darkness,  such  a  tumult  of  ruffians,  bloody 
mtriguers,  and  assassins,  from  the  situation  of  the  two 
'overs,  Max.  Piccolomini  and  the  Princess  Thekla,  both 
/earning  so  profounily  after  peace,  both  so  noble,  both 
BO  young,  and  both  destined  to  be  so  unhappy.  Th< 
•ame  fine  relief,  the  same  light  shining  in  darkness 


PERCY    BYSSHE    SHELLEY.  317 

inses  here  from  the  touching  beauty  of  Beatrice,  from 
her  noble  aspirations  after  deliverance,  from  the  re- 
morse which  reaches  her  in  the  midst  of  real  inno- 
cence, from  her  meekness,  and  from  the  agitation  of 
her  inexpressible  affliction.  Even  the  murder,  e^en 
the  parricide,  though  proceeding  from  herself,  lo  but 
deepen  that  background  of  darkness,  which  throws 
into  fuller  revelation  the  glory  of  that  suffering  face 
immortalized  by  Guido. 

Something  of  a  similar  effect  arises  to  myself  when 
reviewing  the  general  abstract  of  Shelley's  life,  —  so 
brief,  so  full  of  agitation,  so  full  of  strife.  When  one 
thinks  of  the  early  misery  which  he  suffered,  and  of 
the  insolent  infidelity  which,  being  yet  so  young,  he 
wooed  with  a  lover's  passion,  then  the  darkness  of 
midnight  begins  to  form  a  deep,  impenetrable  back- 
ground, upon  which  the  phantasmagoria  of  all  that  is 
to  come  may  arrange  itself  in  troubled  phosphoric 
streams,  and  in  sweeping  processions  of  woe.  Yet, 
again,  when  one  recurs  to  his  gracious  nature,  his  fear- 
lessness, his  truth,  hi?  punty  from  all  fleshliness  of 
appotite,  his  freedom  from  vanity,  his  diffusive  love 
and  tenderness,  —  suddenly,  out  of  the  darkness,  reveals 
itsell  a  morning  of  May ;  forests  and  thickets  of  roses 
advance  to  the  foreground ;  from  the  midst  of  them 
lOoks  out  "  the  etemal*^  child,"  cleansed  from  his  sor- 
'ow,  radiant  with  joy,  having  power  given  him  to  forget 
•.he  misery  which  he  suffered,  power  given  him  to  forget 
the  misery  which  he  caused,  and  leaning  with  his  heart 
ttpon  that  dove-like  faith  against  which  his  erring  in* 
ieilect  had  rebelled 


JOHN  KEATS. 

Mr.  Gilfillan  *  introduces  this  section  with  a  dis- 
cussion upon  the  constitutional  peculiarities  ascribed 
to  men  of  genius  ;  such  as  nervousness  of  tempera- 
ment, idleness,  vanity,  irritability,  and  other  disagree- 
able tendencies  ending  in  ty  or  in  Tiess  ;  one  of  the  ties 
oeing  "  poverty ;  "  which  disease  is  at  least  not  amongst 
those  morbidly  cherished  by  the  patients.  All  that 
can  be  asked  from  the  most  penitent  man  of  genius 
is,  that  he  should  humbly  confess  his  own  besetting 
.nfirmities,  and  endeavor  to  hate  them ;  and,  as 
.aspects  this  one  infirmity  at  least,  I  never  heard  ol 
any  man  (however  eccentric  in  genius)  who  did  other- 
wise.  But  what  special  relation  has  such  a  preface 
to  Keats  ?  His  whole  article  occupies  twelve  pages , 
and  six  of  these  are  allotted  to  this  preliminary  dis- 
cussion, which  perhaps  equally  concerns  every  other 
man  in  the  household  of  literature.  Mr.  Gilfillan 
seems  to  have  been  acting  here  on  celebrated  prece- 
dents. The  "  OmJies  hwnines  qui  sese  student  prtBstare 
,  ceteris  amnudibus "  has  lonj  been  "  smoked  "  by  a 
«vicked  posterity  as  an  old  hack  of  Sallust's  fitted  o» 
nrith  paste  and  scissors  to  the  Catilinarian  conspiracy 

*  "  Gallery  of  Literary  Portraits." 


JOHN    KEATS.  819 

Cicero  candidly  admits  that  he  kept  in  his  wntiug-desk 
an  assortment  of  movable  prefaces,  beautifully  fitted 
(by  means  of  avoiding  all  questions  but  "  the  general 
question  ")  for  parading,  en  grand  costume,  before  any 
conceivable  book.  And  Coleridge,  in  his  early  days, 
used  the  image  of  a  man's  "  sleeping  under  a  maii< 
chineel  tree,"  alternately  with  the  case  of  Alexander's 
killing  his  friend  Clitus,  as  resources  for  illustration 
which  Providence  had  bountifully  made  inexhaustible 
in  their  applications.  No  emergency  could  by  pos- 
sibility arise  to  puzzle  the  poet,  or  the  orator,  but  one 
of  these  similes  (please  Heaven  ! )  should  be  made  to 
meet  it.  So  long  as  the  manchineel  continued  to 
blister  with  poisonous  dews  those  who  confided  in  its 
shelter,  so  long  as  Niebuhr  should  kindly  forbear  to 
prove  that  Alexander  of  Macedon  was  a  hoax,  and 
his  friend  Clitus  a  myth,  so  long  was  Samuel  Taylor 
Coleridge  fixed  and  obdurate  in  his  determination  that 
one  or  other  of  these  images  should  come  upon  duty 
whenever,  as  a  youthful  writer,  he  found  himself  on 
the  brink  of  insolvency. 

But  it  is  less  the  generality  of  this  preface,  or  even 
its  disproportion,  which  fixes  the  eye,  than  the  ques- 
tionableness  of  its  particular  statements.  In  that  part 
which  reviews  the  idleness  of  authors,  Horace  is  given 

jp  as  too  notoriously  indolent ;  the  thing,  it  seems, 
IS  past  denying ;  but  "  not  so  Lucretius."  Indeed ! 
and  how  shall  this  be  brought  to  proof?  Perhaps  the 
"eader  has  hear(?  of  that  barbarian  prince,  who  sent 
Europe  for  a  large  map  of  the  world  accompanied 

y  the  best  of  English  razors;  and  the  clever  use 
wnicli    he    made   of    his    importation   was,   that,   first 


S90  JOHN    KEATS. 

:utting  out  svith  exquisite  accuracy  the  whole  ring, 
fence  of  his  own  dominions,  and  then  doing  the  same 
office,  with  the  same  equity  (barbarous  or  barber-ous) 
for  the  dominions  of  a  hostile  neighbor,  next  he  pro- 
ceeded to  weigh  off  the  rival  segments  against  each 
other  in  a  pair  of  gold  scales ;  after  which,  of  course, 
he  arrived  at  a  satisfactory  algebraic  equation  between 
himself  and  his  enemy.  Now,  upon  this  principle 
of  comparison,  if  we  should  take  any  common  edition 
(as  the  Delphin  or  the  Variorum)  of  Horace  ana 
Lucretius,  strictly  shaving  away  all  notes,  prefaces, 
editorial  absurdities,  &c.,  all  "  flotsom  "  and  "jetsom" 
that  may  have  gathered  like  barnacles  about  the  two 
weather-beaten  hulks ;  in  that  case  we  should  have 
the  two  old  files  undressed,  and  in  puris  naturaliius  ; 
they  would  be  prepared  for  being  weighed ;  and, 
going  to  the  nearest  grocer's,  we  might  then  settle  the 
point  at  once,  as  to  which  of  the  two  had  been  the 
idler  man.  I  back  Horace  for  my  part ;  and  it  is  my 
private  opinion  that,  in  the  case  of  a  quarto  edition, 
the  grocer  would  have  to  throw  at  least  a  two-ounce 
weight  into  the  scale  of  Lucretius,  before  he  could  be 
made  to  draw  against  the  other.  Yet,  after  all,  thi? 
would  only  be  a  collation  of  quantity  against  quantity ; 
whilst,  upon  a  second  collation  of  quality  against  qual- 
ity (I  io  not  mean  quality  as  regards  the  final  merit 
of  the  composition,  but  quality  as  regards  the  difficul- 
ties in  the  process  of  composition),  the  difference  in 
amount  of  labor  would  appear  to  be  as  between  the 
weaving  of  a  blanket  and  the  weaving  of  an  exquisite 
cambric.  The  curiosa  felicitas  of  Horace  in  his  lyric 
•.<:  mpositious,   the   elaborate   delicacy   of    workmanshij 


rOHN    KEATS.  321 

Ji  his  thoughts  and  in  his  style,  argue  a  scale  of  h  bor 
that,  as  against  any  equal  number  of  lines  in  Lucretius, 
would  measure  itself  by  months  against  days.  There 
are  single  odes  in  Horace  that  must  have  cost  him  a 
six  weeks'  seclusion  from  the  wickedness  of  Rome. 
Do  I  then  question  the  extraordinary  power  of  Lucre- 
tius? On  the  contrary,  1  admire  him  as  the  first  of 
demoniacs ;  the  frenzy  of  an  earth-born  or  a  hell-born 
inspiration ;  divinity  of  stormy  music  sweeping  round 
us  in  eddies,  in  order  to  prove  that  for  us  there  could 
be  nothing  divine ;  the  grandeur  of  a  prophet's  voice 
rising  in  angry  gusts,  by  way  of  convincing  us  that 
prophets  were  swindlers ;  oracular  scorn  of  oracles : 
frantic  efTorts,  such  as  might  seem  reasonable  in  one 
who  was  scaling  the  heavens,  for  the  purpose  of 
degrading  all  things,  making  man  to  be  the  most 
abject  of  necessities  as  regarded  his  causes,  to  be  the 
blindest  of  accidents  as  regarded  his  expectations ; 
these  fierce  antinomies  expose  a  mode  of  insanity,  but 
of  an  insanity  affecting  a  sublime  intellect,®  One 
would  suppose  him  partially  mad  by  the  savagery  of 
his  headlong  manner.  And  most  people  who  read 
Lucretius  at  all,  are  aware  of  the  traditional  story 
current  in  Rome,  that  he  did  actually  write  in  a  delir- 
ous  state ;  not  under  any  figurative  disturbance  of 
orain,  but  under  a  real  physical  disturbance  caused  by 
philters  administered  to  him  without  his  own  knowl- 
edge. But  this  kind  of  supernatural  afflatus  did  not 
deliver  into  words  and  metre  by  lingering  oscillations, 
iind  through  processes  of  se^f-correction ;  it  threw 
Itself  forward,  and  precipitated  its  own  utterance,  with 
the  hurrying  and  bounding  of  a  cataract.  It  waa  an 
21 


522  JOHN    KEiTS. 

Kstrum,  a  rapture,  the  bounding  of  a  moenad,  hy 
which  the  muse  of  Lucretius  lived  and  moved.  So 
much  is  known  by  the  impression  about  him  current 
imong  his  contemporaries :  so  much  is  evident  in  the 
characteristic  manner  of  his  poem,  if  all  anecdotes 
had  perished.  And,  upon  the  whole,  let  the  propor- 
tions of  power  between  Horace  and  Lucretius  be  what 
they  may,  the  proportions  of  labor  are  absolutely 
incommensurable :  in  Horace  the  labor  was  directly 
as  the  power,  in  Lucretius  inversely  as  the  power. 
Whatsoever  in  Horace  was  best  —  had  been  obtained 
by  most  labor ;  whatsoever  in  Lucretius  was  best  —  by 
least.  In  Horace,  the  exquisite  skill  cooperated  with 
the  exquisite  nature  ;  in  Lucretius,  the  powerful  nature 
disdained  the  skill,  which,  indeed,  would  not  have 
been  applicable  to  his  theme,  or  to  his  treatment  of 
it,  and  triumphed  by  means  of  mere  precipitation  of 
volume,  and  of  headlong  fury. 

Another  paradox  of  Mr.  Gilfillan's,  under  this  head, 
is,  that  he  classes  Dr.  Johnson  as  indolent ;  and  it  is 
the  more  startling,  because  he  does  not  utter  it  as  a 
careless  opinion  upon  which  he  might  have  been 
thrown  by  inconsideration,  but  as  a  concession  extorted 
from  him  reluctantly ;  he  had  sought  to  evade  it,  but 
Lould  not.  Now,  that  Dr.  Johnson  had  a  morbid 
predisposition  to  decline  labor  from  his  scrofulous 
habit  of  body,®*  is  probable.  The  question  for  us 
however,  is,  not  what  nature  prompted  him  to  do,  but 
what  he  did.  If  he  had  an  extra  difficulty  to  fight 
with  in  attempting  to  labor,  the  more  was  nis  merit 
'm  the  known  result,  that  he  did  fight  with  that  diffi 
wU.ty,  and  that  he  conquered  it.     This  is  undeniable 


JOHN    KEATS.  323 

A.nd  the  attempt  to  deny  it  presents  itself  in  a  comic 
shape,  when  one  imagines  some  ancient  shelf  in  a 
library,  that  has  groaned  for  nearly  a  century  under 
the  weight  of  the  doctor's  works,  demanding,  "  How 
say  you  ?  Is  this  Sam  Johnson,  whose  Dictionary 
alone  is  a  load  for  a  camel,  one  of  those  authors 
whom  you  call  idle  ?  Then  Heaven  preserve  us  poor 
oppressed  book-shelves  from  such  as  you  will  consider 
active."  George  III.,  in  a  compliment  as  happily 
turned  as  if  it  had  proceeded  from  Louis  XIV., 
expressed  his  opinion  upon  this  question  of  the  doctor's 
industry  by  saying,  that  he  also  should  join  in  thinking 
Johnson  too  voluminous  a  contributor  to  literature, 
were  it  not  for  the  extraordinary  ment  of  his  contri- 
butions. Now  it  would  be  an  odd  way  of  turning  the 
royal  praise  into  a  reproach,  if  we  should  say :  "  Sam, 
had  you  been  a  pretty  good  writer,  we,  your  country- 
men, should  have  held  you  to  be  also  an  industrious 
writer ;  but,  because  you  are  a  very  good  writer,  there- 
fore we  pronounce  you  a  lazy  vagabond." 

Upon  other  points  in  this  discussion  there  is  some 
room  to  differ  with  Mr.  Gilfillan.  For  instance,  with 
respect  to  the  question  of  the  comparative  happiness 
enjoyed  by  men  of  genius,  it  is  not  necessary  to  argue, 
nor  does  it  seem  possible  to  prove,  even  in  the  case  of 
ony  one  individual  poet,  that,  on  the  whole,  he  was 
fcither  more  happy  or  less  happy  than  the  average 
mass  of  his  fellow-men ;  far  less  could  this  be  argued 
i  to  the  whole  class  of  poets.  What  seems  really 
jpen  to  proof,  is,  that  men  of  genms  have  a  larger 
capacity  of  happiness,  which  capacity,  both  from 
*rithin  and  from  without,  may  be  defeated  in  ten  thou 


ft24  JOHN    KEATS 

Band  ways.  This  seems  involved  in  the  very  vord 
genius.  For,  after  all  the  pretended  .ind  hollow  at 
tempts  to  distinguish  genius  from  talent,  I  shall  continue 
to  think  (what  heretofore  I  have  explained)  that  no 
distinction  in  the  case  is  tenable  for  a  moment  but  this ; 
namely  that  genius  is  that  mode  of  intellectual  powei 
which  moves  in  alliance  with  the  genial  nature,  that  is, 
with  the  capacities  of  pleasure  and  pain ;  whereas  talent 
has  no  vestige  of  such  an  alliance,  and  is  perfectly  inde- 
pendent of  all  human  sensibilities.  Consequently,  genius 
is  a  voice  or  breathing  that  represents  the  total  nature 
of  man ;  whilst,  on  the  contrary,  talent  represents  only 
a  single  function  of  that  nature.  Genius  is  the  language 
which  interprets  the  synthesis  of  the  human  spirit  with 
the  human  intellect,  each  acting  through  the  other; 
whilst  talent  speaks  only  from  the  insulated  intellect. 
And  hence  also  it  is  that,  besides  its  relation  to  suffering 
and  enjoyment,  genius  ahvays  implies  a  deeper  relation 
to  virtue  and  vice  ;  whereas  talent  has  no  shadow  of  a 
relation  to  moral  qualities,  any  more  than  it  has  to  vital 
sensibilities.  A  man  of  the  highest  talent  is  often 
obtuse  and  below  the  ordinary  standard  of  men  in  his 
feelings  ;  but  no  man  of  genius  can  unyoke  himself  from 
the  society  of  moral  perceptions  that  are  brighter,  and 
sensibilities  that  are  more  tremulous,  than  those  of  men 
in  general. 

As  to  the  examples  65  by  which  Mr  Gilfillan  supports 
his  prevailing  views,  they  will  be  construed  by  any  ten 
thousand  men  in  ten  thousand  separate  modes.  The 
objections  are  so  endless  that  it  would  be  abusing  the 
•eader's  time  to  urge  them ;  especially  as  every  mat 
m"  the  ten  thousand    will  be  wrong,  and  will  also  be 


.     JOHN    KKATS.  325 

;ight,  in  all  varieties  of  proportion.  Two  only  it  may 
be  useful  to  notice  as  examples,  involving  some  degree 
af  error,  namely,  Addison  and  Homer.  As  to  the  first, 
the  error,  if  an  error,  is  one  of  fact  only.  Lord  Byron 
had  said  of  Addison,  that  he  "  died  drunk."  This  seems 
to  M:.  GilfiUan  a  "horrible  statement;"  for  which  he 
supposes  that  no  authority  can  exist  but  "  a  rumor  circu- 

ated  by  an  inveterate  gossip,"  meaning  Horace  Wa!- 
pole.  But  gossips  usually  go  upon  some  foundation, 
broad  or  narrow ;  and,  until  the  rumor  had  been  authen- 
tically put  down,  Mr.  GilfiUan  should  not  have  pro- 
nounced it  a  "  malignant  calumny."  Me  this  story 
caused  to  laugh  exceedingly ;  not  at  Addison,  whose 
fine  genius  extorts  pity  and  tenderness  towards  his  in- 
firmities ;  but  at  the  characteristic  misanthropy  of  Lord 
Byron,  who  chuckles  as  he  would  do  over  a  glass  of 
nectar,  on  this  opportunity  for  confronting  the  old  solemn 
legend  about  Addison's  sending  for  his  step-son.  Lord 
Warwick,  to  witness  the  peaceful  death  of  a  Christian, 
with  so  rich  a  story  as  this,  that  he,  the  said  Christian, 
"  died  drunk."  Supposing  that  he  did,  the  mere  phys- 
ical fact  of  inebriation,  in  a  stage  of  debility  where  so 
small  an  excess  of  stimulating  liquor  (though  given 
medicinally)  sometimes  causes  such  an  appearance, 
would  not  infer  the  moral  blame  of  drunkenness  ;  and  if 
such  a  thing  were  ever  said  by  any  person  present  at  the 

>d-side,  I  should  feel  next  to  certain  that  it  was  said  in 
that  spirit  of  exaggeration  to  which  most  men  are 
tempted  by  circumstances  unusually  fitted  to  impress  a 
startling  picturesqueness  upon  the  statement.  But, 
^thout  insisting  upon  Lord  Byron's  way  of  putting  the 
case,  I  believe  it  is  generally  understood  that,  latterly, 


326  JOHN    KKATS. 

Addison  gave  way  to  habits  of  intemperance.  He  suf- 
fered, not  only  from  his  wife's  dissatisfied  temper,*^  but 
also  (and  probably  much  more^  from  ennui.  He  did 
not  walk  one  mile  a  day,  and  he  ought  to  have  walked 
ten.  Dyspepsia  was,  no  doubt,  the  true  ground  of  hia 
unhappiness ;  and  he  had  nothing  to  hof)e  for.  To  rem- 
edy these  evils,  I  have  always  understood  that  every 
day  (and  especially  towards  night)  he  drank  too  much 
of  that  French  liquor,  which,  calling  itself  water  of  life, 
nine  times  in  ten  proves  the  water  of  death.  He  lived 
latterly  at  Kensington,  namely,  in  Holland  House,  the 
well-known  residence  of  the  late  Lord  Holland  ;  and  the 
tradition  attached  to  the  gallery  in  that  house,  is,  that 
duly  as  the  sun  drew  near  to  setting,  on  two  tables,  one 
at  each  end  of  the  long  ambrdackrum,  the  right  honorable 
Joseph  placed,  or  caused  to  be  placed,  two  tumblers  of 
brandy,  somewhat  diluted  with  water;  and  those,  the 
said  vessels,  then  and  there  did  alternately  to  the  lips  of 
him,  the  aforesaid  Joseph,  diligently  apply,  walking 
to  and  fro  during  the  process  of  exhaustion,  and 
dividing  his  attention  between  the  two  poles,  arctic  and 
nntartic,  of  his  evening  diaulos,  with  the  impartiality  to 
>e  expected  from  a  member  of  the  Privy  Council.  How 
>ften  the  two  "  blessed  bears,"  northern  and  southern, 
were  replenished,  entered  into  no  affidavit  that  ever 
reached  me.  But  so  much  I  have  always  understood 
that  in  the  gallery  of  Holland  House,  the  ex-secretary 
of  state  caught  a  decided  hiccup,  which  never  after- 
ivards  subsided.  In  all  this  there  would  have  bees 
.ittle  to  shock  people,  had  it  not  been  for  the  syco 
ihancy  which  ascribed  to  Addison  a  religious  reputa 
lion  such  as  he  neither  merited  nor  wished  to  claim 


JOHN    KEATS  327 

But  one  penal  reaction  of  niendacious  adulation,  for 
nim  who  is  weak  enough  to  accept  it,  must  ever  be 
to  impose  restramts  upon  his  own  conduct,  which 
otherwise  he  would  have  been  free  to  decline.  How 
lightly  would  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  have  thought  of 
a  little  sotting  in  any  honest  gentleman  of  right  poli- 
tics !  And  Addison  would  not,  in  that  age,  and  as  to 
that  point,  have  carried  his  scrupulosity  higher  than 
his  own  Sir  Roger.  But  such  knaves  as  he  who  had 
complimented  Addison  with  the  praise  of  having 
written  "  no  line  which,  dying,  he  could  wish  to  blot,' 
whereas,  in  fact,  Addison  started  in  life  by  publishing 
a  translation  of  Petronius  Arbiter,  had  painfully  coerced 
his  free  agency.  This  knave,  I  very  much  fear,  was 
Tickell  the  first ;  and  the  result  of  his  knavery  was,  to 
win  for  Addison  a  disagreeable  sanctimonious  reputation 
that  was,  first,  founded  in  lies  ;  second,  that  painfully 
limited  Addison's  free  agency  ;  and,  thirdly,  that  prepared 
insults  to  his  memory,  since  it  pointed  a  censorious  eye 
upon  those  things,  viewed  as  the  acts  of  a  demure  pre- 
tender to  piety,  which  would  else  have  passed  without 
notice  as  the  most  venial  of  frailties  in  a  layman. 

Something  I  had  to  say  also  upon  Homer,  who 
mingles  amongst  the  examples  cited  by  Mr.  GilfiUan, 
of  apparent  happiness  connected  with  genius.  But,  for 
want  of  room, "7  I  forbear  to  go  further,  than  to  lodge 
my  protest  against  imputing  to  Homer  as  any  personal 
merit,  what  belongs  altogether  to  the  stage  of  society  in 
which  he  lived.  "  They,"  says  Mr.  Gilfillan,  speaking 
of  the  "  Iliad  "  and  the  "  Odyssey,"  "  are  the  nealthies>i 
of  works.  There  are  in  them  no  sullenness,  no  quer- 
tilous  complaint  not  one  personal  allusion."     No  •  but 


9ZO  JOHN    KEATS. 

how  could  there  have  been  ?  Subjective  poetry  had  not 
an  existence  in  those  days.  Not  only  the  powers  for 
introverting  the  eye  upon  the  spectator,  as  himself,  the 
sjiectactdum,  were  then  undeveloped  and  inconceivable 
but  the  sympathies  did  not  exist  to  which  such  an  inno- 
vation could  have  appealed.  Besides,  and  partly  from 
the  same  cause,  even  as  objects,  the  human  feelings  and 
afiections  were  too  broadly  and  grossly  distinguished, 
had  not  reached  even  the  infancy  of  that  stage  in  which 
the  passions  begin  their  process  of  intermodification,  nor 
could  have  reached  it,  from  the  simplicity  of  social  life. 
as  well  as  from  the  barbarism  of  the  Greek  religion. 
The  author  of  the  "  Iliad,"  or  even  of  the  "  Odyssey  " 
(though  doubtless  a  product  of  a  later  period),  could  not 
have  been  "  unhealthy,"  or  "  sullen,"  or  "  querulous," 
from  any  cause,  except  psora  or  elephantiasis,  or  scarcity 
of  beef,  or  similar  afflictions  with  which  it  is  quite  im- 
possible to  inoculate  poetr\'.  The  metrical  romances  of 
the  middle  ages  have  the  same  shivering  character  of 
starvation,  as  to  the  inner  life  of  man ;  and,  if  that  con- 
stitutes a  meritorious  distinction,  no  man  ought  to  be 
excused  for  wanting  what  it  is  so  easy  to  obtain  by 
simple  neglect  of  culture.  On  the  same  principle,  a 
cannibal,  if  truculently  indiscriminate  in  his  horrid  diet, 
might  win  sentimental  praises  for  his  temperance ; 
others  were  picking  and  choosing,  miserable  epicures  ! 
but  he,  the  saint  upon  earth,  cared  not  what  he  ate;  any 
oint  satisfied  his  moderate  desires ;  shoulder  of  man,  leg 
of  child ;  anything,  in  fact,  that  was  nearest  at  hand,  so 
long  an  it  was  good,  wholesome  human  flesh ;  and  the 
nnore  plainly  dressed  the  better. 

Rut  the.se  tnnir„s.  so  various  and  so  fruitful,  1  touck 


JOHN    KEATS.  329 

Dnly  because  they  are  introduced,  amongst  many  others, 
oy  Mr,  Gilfillan.  Separately  viewed,  some  of  these 
would  be  more  attractive  than  any  merely  personal  in- 
terest connected  with  Keats.  His  biography,  stripped 
of  its  false  coloring,  offers  little  to  win  attention  ;  for  he 
was  not  the  victim  of  any  systematic  malignity,  as  has 
been  represented.  He  met,  as  I  have  understood,  with 
unusual  kindness  from  his  liberal  publishers,  Messrs. 
Taylor  and  Hessey.  He  met  with  unusual  severity 
from  a  cynical  reviewer,  the  late  Mr.  Gifford,  then 
editor  of  Tlie  Quarterly  Review.  The  story  ran,  that 
this  article  of  Mr.  G.'s  had  killed  Keats;  upon  which, 
with  natural  astonishment.  Lord  Byron  thus  commented, 
in  the  11th  canto  of  Don  Juan  :  — 

"  John  Keats  who  was  killed  off  by  one  critique. 
Just  ts  he  really  promised  something  great. 

If  not  intelligible,  —  without  Greek, 

Contrived  to  talk  about  the  gods  of  late. 

Much  as  they  might  have  been  supposed  to  speak. 
Poor  fellow  !  his  was  an  untoward  fate  : 

'T  is  strange  the  mind,  that  very  fiery  particle,^ 

Should  let  itself  be  snuffed  out  by  an  Article." 

Strange,  indeed  !  and  the  friends  who  honor  Keats' 
memory,  should  not  lend  themselves  to  a  story  so  de- 
g^ding.  He  died,  I  believe,  of  pulmonary  consumption 
and  wo  aid  have  died  of  it,  probably,  under  any  circum- 
stances of  prosperity  as  a  poet.  Doubtless,  in  a  condition 
of  languishing  decay,  slight  causes  of  irritation  act 
powerfully.  But  it  is  hardly  conceivable  that  one  ebul- 
ition  of  splenetic  bad  feeling,  in  a  case  so  proverbially 
open  to  revision  as  the  pretensions  of  a  poet,  could  have 
verthrown   any  masculine  life,  unless   where  that  life 


S80  JOHN    KEATS. 

had  already  been  irrecoverally  undermined  by  sickness 
As  a  man,  and  viewed  in  relation  to  social  objects 
Keats  was  nothing.  It  was  as  mere  an  affectation  when 
he  talked  with  apparent  zeal  of  liberty,  or  human  rights 
or  human  prospects,  as  is  the  hollow  enthusiasm  which 
many  people  profess  for  music,  or  most  poets  for  external 
nature.  For  these  things  Keats  fancied  that  he  cared  ; 
but  in  reality  he  cared  not  at  all.  Upon  them,  or  any 
of  their  aspects,  he  had  thought  too  little,  and  too  in- 
determinately, to  feel  for  them  as  personal  concerns. 
Whereas  Shelley,  from  his  earliest  days,  was  mastered 
and  shaken  by  the  great  moving  realities  of  life,  as  a 
prophet  is  by  the  burden  of  wrath  or  of  promise  which 
he  has  been  commissioned  to  reveal.  Had  there  been 
no  such  thing  as  literature,  Keats  would  have  dwindled 
jnto  a  cipher.  Shelley,  in  the  same  event,  would  hardly 
have  lost  one  plume  from  his  crest.  It  is  in  relation  to 
literature,  and  to  the  boundless  questions  as  to  the  true 
and  the  false  arising  out  of  literature  and  poetry,  that 
Keats  challenges  a  fluctuating  interest ;  sometimes  an 
interest  of  strong  disgust,  sometimes  of  deep  admiration. 
There  is  not,  I  believe,  a  case  on  record  throughout 
European  literature,  where  feelings  so  repulsive  of  each 
other  have  centred  in  the  same  individual.  The  very 
midsummer  madness  of  affectation,  of  false  vapory 
sentiment,  and  of  fantastic  effeminacy,  seemed  to  me 
combined  m  Keats'  Endymion,  when  I  first  saw  it  near 
the  close  of  1821.  The  Italian  poet,  Marino,  had  been 
reputed  the  greatest  master  of  gossamery  affectation  in 
Europe.  But  his  conceits  showed  the  palest  of  rosy 
blushes  by  the  side  of  Keats'  bloody  crimson.  Natu 
rally.  I   was   discouraged   from   looking  further      But 


JOHN   KEATS.  331 

about  a  week  later,  by  pure  accident,  my  eye  fell  upon 
his  Hyperion.  The  first  feeling  was  that  of  incredulity 
that  the  two  poems  could,  under  change  of  circum- 
stances or  lapse  of  time,  have  emanated  from  the  same 
mind.  The  Endymion  displays  absolutely  the  most 
shocking  revolt  against  good  sense  and  just  feeling,  that 
all  literature  does  now,  or  ever  can  furnish.  The  Hy^ 
verion,  as  Mr.  GilfiUan  truly  says,  "  is  the  greatest  of 
poetical  torsos."  The  first  belongs  essentially  to  the 
vilest  collections  of  wax-work  filigree,  or  gilt  ginger- 
bread. The  other  presents  the  majesty,  the  austere 
beauty,  and  the  simplicity  of  Grecian  temples  enriched 
with  Grecian  sculpture. 

We  have  in  this  country  a  word,  namely,  the  word 
FoUy,  which  has  a  technical  appropriation  to  the  case  of 
fantastic  buildings.  Any  building  is  called  "  a  folly,"^ 
which  mimics  purposes  incapable  of  being  realized,  and 
makes  a  promise  to  the  eye  which  it  cannot  keep  to  the 
experience.  The  most  impressive  illustration  of  this 
idea,  which  modern  times  have  seen,  was,  undoubtedly, 
the  ice-palace  of  the  Empress  Elizabeth™  — 

"  That  most  magnificent  and  mighty  freak," 

which,  about  eighty  years  ago,  was  called  up  from  the 
depths  of  winter  by 

**  The  imperial  mistress  of  the  fdr-olad  Buss." 

Winter  and  the  Czarina  were,  in  this  architecture,  fel- 
low-laborers. She,  by  her  servants,  furnished  the  blocks 
»f  ice,  hewed  them,  dressed  them,  laid  them :  winter 
furnished  the  cement,  by  freezing  them  together.  The 
•alace  has  long  melted  back  into  water;  and  the  poet 


7 


382  JOHN    KEATS. 

who  described  it  best,  namely,  Cowper,  is  not  so  much 
read  in  this  age,  except  by  the  religious.  It  will,  there- 
fore, be  a  sort  of  resurrection  for  both  the  palace  and 
ihe  poet,  if  I  cite  his  description  of  this  gorgeous  folly 
tt  is  a  passage  in  which  Cowper  assumes  so  much  of  a 
Miltonic  tone,  that,  of  the  two,  it  is  better  to  have  read 
his  lasting  description,  than  to  have  seen,  with  bodiiy 
eyes  the  fleeting  reality.  The  poet  is  apostrophiyir.^ 
the  Empress  Elizabeth. 

"  No  forest  fell, 


When  thou  wouldst  build  :  no  quarry  sent  its  stores 
To  enrich  thy  walls  :  but  thou  didst  hew  the  floods 
And  make  thy  marble  of  the  glassy  wave. 


Silently  as  a  dream  the  fabric  rose  : 

No  sound  of  hammer  or  of  saw  was  there : 

Ice  upon  ice,  the  well  adjusted  parts 

Were  soon  conjoined,  nor  other  cement  asked 

Than  water  interfused  to  make  them  one. 

Lamps  gracefully  disposed,  and  of  all  hues. 

Illumined  every  side  ;  a  watery  light 

Gleamed  through  the  clear  transparency,  that  seemed 

Another  moon  new-risen  :  -^—— 


Nor  wanted  aught  within 

That  royal  residence  might  well  befit 

For  grandeur  or  for  use.     Long  weavy  wreatha 

Of  flowers,  that  feared  no  enemy  but  warmth. 

Blushed  on  the  panels.     Mirror  needed  none. 

Where  all  was  vitreous  :  but  in  order  due 

Convivial  table  and  commodious  seat 

(What  teejiud  at  least  commodious  seat)  were  there  ; 

Sofa,  and  couch,  and  high-built  throne  august 

The  same  lubricity  was  found  in  all. 


JO0N    KEATS.  S89 

And  all  was  moist  to  the  warm  touch  ;  a  scene 
Of  evanescent  glory,  once  a  stream. 
And  soon  to  slide  into  a  stream  again." 

The  poet  concludes  by  viewing  the  whole  as  an  an 
ntentional  stroke  of  satire  by  the  Czarina, 

— ^—  ♦'  On  her  own  estate. 


On  haman  grandeur,  and  the  courts  of  kings. 

'T  was  transient  in  its  nature,  as  in  show 

'T  was  durable  ;  as  worthless,  as  it  seemed 

Intrinsically  precious  :  to  the  foot 

Treacherous  and  false,  —  it  smiled,  and  it  was  cold." 

Looking  at  this  imperial  plaything  of  ice  in  the 
month  of  March,  and  recollecting  that  in  May  all  its 
crystal  arcades  would  be  weeping  away  into  vernal 
brooks,  one  would  have  been  disposed  to  mourn  over  a 
beauty  so  frail,  and  to  marvel  at  a  frailty  so  elaborate. 
Yet  still  there  was  some  proportion  observed :  the  saloons 
were  limited  in  number,  though  not  limited  in  splendor. 
It  was  a  petit  Triayion.  But  what  if,  like  Versailles 
this  glittering  bauble,  to  which  all  the  science  of  Europe 
could  not  have  secured  a  passport  into  June,  had  con- 
tained six  thousand  separate  rooms  ?  A  "  folly  "  on  so 
gigantic  a  scale  would  have  moved  every  man  to  indig- 
nation. For  all  that  could  be  had,  the  beauty  to  the  eye, 
Rnd  the  gratification  to  the  fancy,  in  seeing  water  tor- 
tured into  every  form  of  solidity,  resulted  from  two  or 
three  suites  of  rooms,  as  fully  as  from  a  thousand. 

Now,  such  a  folly,  as  would  have  been  the  Czarina's, 
if  executed  upon  the  scale  of  Versailles,  or  of  the  new 
palace  at  St.  Petersburg,  was  the  Endymion  :  a  gigantic 
^ifice  (for  its  tortuous  engimas  of  thought  multiplied 
every  iine  of  the  four  thousand  into  fifty)  reared  upor  a 


534  JOHN    KEATS. 

basis  slighter  and  less  apprehensible  than  moonshine 
As  reasonably,  and  as  hopefully  in  regard  to  human 
sympathies,  might  a  man  undertake  an  epic  poem  upon 
the  loves  of  two  butterflies.  The  modes  of  existence 
m  the  two  parties  to  the  love-fable  of  the  Endymion, 
their  relations  to  each  other  and  to  us,  their  prospects 
finally,  and  the  obstacles  to  the  instant  realization  cf 
these  prospects,  —  all  these  things  are  more  vague  and 
incomprehensible  than  the  reveries  of  an  oyster.  Still 
the  unhappy  subject,  and  its  unhappy  expansion,  must 
be  laid  to  the  account  of  childish  years  and  childish  in- 
experience. But  there  is  another  fault  in  Keats,  of  the 
first  magnitude,  which  youth  does  not  palliate,  which 
youth  even  aggravates.  This  lies  in  the  most  shocking 
abuse  of  his  mother-tongue.  If  there  is  one  thing  in 
this  world  that,  next  after  the  flag  of  his  country  and  its 
spotless  honor,  should  be  wholly  in  the  eyes  of  a  young 
poet,  —  it  is  the  language  of  his  country.  He  should 
spend  the  third  part  of  his  life  in  studying  this  language, 
and  cultivating  its  total  resources.  He  should  be  willing 
to  pluck  out  his  right  eye,  or  to  circumnavigate  the  globe, 
if  by  such  a  sacrifice,  if  by  such  an  exertion,  he  could 
attain  to  greater  purity,  precision,  compass,  or  idiomatic 
energy'  of  diction.  This  if  he  were  even  a  Kalmuck 
Tartar,  who  by  the  way  has  the  good  feeling  and  patriotism 
to  pride  himself  upon  his  beastly  language.'^  But 
Keats  was  an  Englishman ;  Keats  had  the  honor  to 
speak  the  language  of  Chaucer,  Shakspeare,  Bacon 
Milton,  Newton.  The  more  awful  was  the  obligation 
of  his  allegiance.  And  yet  upon  this  mother  tongue 
upon  this  English  language,  has  Keats  trampled  as  with 
the  hoofs  of  a  bufialo.     With  its  syntax,  with  its  pros 


JOHN    KEATS.  335 

ody,  with  its  idiom,  he  has  played  such  fantastic  tricks 
as  could  enter  only  into  the  heart  of  a  barbarian,  and 
for  which  only  the  anarchy  of  Chaos  could  furnish  a 
forgiving  audience.  Verily  it  required  the  Hyperion  to 
weigh  against  the  deep  treason  of  these  unparalleled 
offencea. 


WILLIAM   GODWIN* 

It  is  no  duty  of  a  notice  so  cursory  to  discuss  Mr. 
Godwin  as  a  philosopher.  Mr.  Gilfillan  admits  that 
in  this  character  he  did  not  earn  much  popularity  by 
any  absolute  originality;  and  of  such  popularity  as 
he  may  have  snatched  surreptitiously  without  it, 
clearly  all  must  have  long  since  exhaled  before  it 
could  be  possible  for  "  a  respectable  person  "  to  de- 
mand of  Mr.  Gilhllan  "  Whjo  's  Godwin  ?  "  A  ques- 
tion which  Mr.  Gilfillan  justly  thinks  it  possible  that 
•some  readers,"  of  the  present  day,  November,  1845, 
may  repeat.  That  is,  we  must  presume,  not  who  is 
Godwin  the  novelist  ?  but  who  is  Godwin  the  political 
philosopher?  In  that  character  he  is  now  forgotten. 
And  yet  in  that  he  carried  one  single  shock  into  the 
bosom  of  English  society,  fearful  but  momentary,  like 
that  from  the  electric  blow  of  the  gymnotus ;  or,  per- 
haps, the  intensity  of  the  brief  panic  which,  fifty  years 
ago,  he  impressed  on  the  public  mind,  may  be  more 
adequately  expressed  by  the  case  of  a  ship  in  the 
middle  ocean  suddenly  scraping,  with  her  keel,  a  rag 

•  "  A  Gallery  of  Literacy  Portraits."     By  George  Gilfillan. 


WILLIAM    GODWIN.  337 

ged  rock,  hai.jing  for  one  moment,  as  if  impaled  upon 
the  teetli  of  the  dreadful  sierra,  then,  by  the  mere 
impetus  of  her  mighty  sails,  grinding  audibly  to 
powder  the  fangs  of  this  accursed  submarine  harrow, 
leaping  into  deep  water  again,  and  causing  the  panic 
of  ruin  to  be  simultaneous  with  the  deep  sense  of  de- 
liverance. In  the  quarto  (that  is,  the  original)  edition 
of  his  "  Political  Justice,"  Mr.  Godwin  advanced  against 
thrones  and  dominations,  powers  and  principalities, 
with  the  air  of  some  Titan  slinger  or  monarchist 
from  Thebes  and  Troy,  saying,  "  Come  hither,  ye 
wretches,  that  I  may  give  your  flesh  to  the  fowls  of 
the  air."  But,  in  the  second,  or  octavo  edition,  —  and 
under  what  motive  has  never  been  explained, — he 
recoiled,  absolutely,  from  the  sound  himself  had  made : 
everybody  else  was  appalled  by  the  fury  of  the  chal- 
lenge; and,  through  the  strangest  of  accidents,  Mr. 
Godwin  also  was  appalled.  The  second  edition,  as 
regards  principles,  is  not  a  recast,  but  absolutely  a  trav- 
esty of  the  first :  nay,  it  is  all  but  a  palinode.  In  this 
collapse  of  a  tense  excitement,  I  myself  find  the  true 
reason  for  the  utter  extinction  of  the  "  Political  Jus- 
tice," and  of  its  author  considered  as  a  philosopher. 
Subsequently,  he  came  forward  as  a  philosophical 
epeculator,  in  "  The  Enquirer,"  and  elsewhere ;  but 
here  it  was  always  some  minor  question  which  he 
raised,  or  some  mixed  question,  rather  allied  to  philos- 
ophy than  philosophical.  As  regarded  the  main  cre- 
ative nistis  of  his  philosophy,  it  remained  undeniable 
that,  in  relation  to  the  hostility  of  the  world,  he  was 
like  one  who,  in  some  piratical  ship,  should  drop  his 
anchor  before  Portsmouth,  —  should  defy  the  navies  ot 
22 


i38  WILLUM    GODWIN. 

England  to  come  out  and  fight,  and  then,  whilst  a  thou 
Band  vessels  were  contending  for  the  preference  in  blow- 
ing him  out  of  the  seas,  should  suddenly  slip  his 
cables  and  run. 

But  it  is  as  a  novelist,  not  as  a  political  theoristj  thai 
Mr.  Gilfillan  values  Godwin ;  and  specially  for  his  nove» 
of  "  Caleb  Williams."  Now,  if  this  were  the  eccentric 
judgment  of  one  unsupported  man,  however  able,  and 
had  received  no  countenance  at  all  from  others,  it 
might  be  injudicious  to  detain  the  reader  upon  it.  It 
happens,  however,  that  other  men  of  talent  have  raised 
"  Caleb  Williams  "  to  a  station  in  the  first  rank  of  nov- 
els ;  whilst  many  more,  amongst  whom  1  am  compelled 
to  class  myself,  can  see  in  it  no  merit  of  any  kind. 
A  schism,  which  is  really  perplexing,  exists  in  this 
particular  case ;  and,  that  the  reader  may  judge  for 
himself,  I  will  state  the  outline  of  the  plot,  out  of  which 
■*t  is  that  the  whole  interest  must  be  supposed  to  grow ; 
for  the  characters  are  nothing,  being  mere  generalities, 
and  very  slightly  developed.  Thirty-five  years  it  is 
since  I  read  the  book  ;  but  the  nakedness  of  the  incidents 
makes  them  easily  rememberable.  —  Falkland,  who 
passes  for  a  man  of  a  high-minded  and  delicate  honoi, 
but  is,  in  fact,  distinguished  only  by  acute  sensibil- 
ity to  the  opinion  of  the  world,  receives  a  dreadful 
insult  /n  a  most  public  situation.  It  is,  indeed,  more 
than  an  insult,  being  the  most  brutal  of  outrages.  In 
a  ball-room,  where  the  local  gentry  and  his  neighbors 
i»ie  assembled,  he  is  knocked  down,  kicked,  dragged 
along  the  floor,  by  a  ruffian  squire,  named  Tyrrel.  It 
is  vain  to  resist ;  he  himself  is  slightly  built,  and  hia 
antagonist  is  a  powerful  man.     In  these  circumstances 


WILLIAM   GODWIN.  339 

ind  under  the  eyes  of  all  the  ladies  in  the  countj 
witnessing  every  step  of  his  humiliation,  no  man  could 
severely  have  blamed  him,  nor  would  English  law 
have  severely  punished  him,  if,  in  the  frenzy  of  his 
agitation,  he  had  seized  a  poker  and  laid  his  assailant 
dead  upon  the  spot.  Such  allowance  does  the  natura^ 
feeling  of  men,  such  allowance  does  the  sternness  of 
the  judgment-seat,  make  for  human  infirmity  when 
tried  to  extremity  by  devilish  provocation.  But  Falk- 
land does  not  avenge  himself  thus  :  he  goes  out,  makes 
his  little  arrangements,  and,  at  a  later  hour  of  the 
night,  he  comes,  by  surprise,  upon  Tyrrel,  and  mur- 
ders him  in  the  darkness.  Here  is  the  first  vice  in  the 
story.  With  any  gleam  of  generosity  in  his  nature, 
no  man  in  pursuit  of  vengeance  would  have  found  it 
in  such  a  catastrophe.  That  an  enemy  should  die  by 
apoplexy,  or  by  lightning,  would  be  no  gratification 
of  wrath  to  an  impassioned  pursuer :  to  make  it  a 
retribution  for  him,  he  himself  must  be  associated  to 
the  catastrophe  in  the  consciousness  of  his  victim. 
Falkland  for  some  time  evades  or  tramples  on  detec- 
tion. But  his  evil  genius  at  last  appears  in  the  shape 
of  Caleb  Williams ;  and  the  agency  through  which 
Mr.  Caleb  accomplishes  his  mission  is  not  that  of  any 
grand  passion,  but  of  vile  eavesdropping  inquisitive- 
ness.  Mr.  Falkland  had  hired  him  as  an  amanuensis  , 
tnd  in  that  character  Caleb  had  occasion  to  observe 
that  some  painful  remembrance  weighed  upon  his 
Tiaster's  mind ;  and  that  something  or  other  —  docu- 
ments or  personal  memorials  connected  with  this  re- 
membrance —  were  oeposited  in  a  trunk  visited  at 
intervals  by  Falkland.     But  of  what  nature  could  these 


540  WILLUM   GODWIN. 

memorials  be  ?  Surely  Mr.  Falkland  would  not  keep 
in  brandy  the  gory  head  of  Tyrrel;  and  anything 
short  of  that  could  not  proclaim  any  murder  at  all 
much  less  the  particular  murder.  Strictly  speaking 
nothing  could  be  in  the  trunk,  of  a  nature  to  connect 
Falkland  with  the  murder  more  closely  than  the  cir- 
cumstances had  already  connected  him;  and  those 
circumstances,  as  we  know,  had  been  insufficient.  It 
puzzles  one,  therefore,  to  imagine  any  evidence  which 
the  trunk  could  yield,  unless  there  were  secreted  within 
it  some  known  personal  property  of  Tyrrel's ;  in  which 
case  the  aspiring  Falkland  had  committed  a  larceny 
as  well  as  murder.  Caleb,  meantime,  wastes  no 
labor  in  hypothetic  reasonings,  but  resolves  to  have 
ocular  satisfaction  in  the  matter.  An  opportunity 
offers ;  an  alarm  of  fire  is  given  in  the  day-time ;  and 
whilst  Mr.  Falkland,  with  his  people,  is  employed  on 
the  lawn  manning  the  buckets,  Caleb  skulks  off  to  the 
trunk ;  feeling,  probably,  that  his  first  duty  was  to 
himself,  by  extinguishing  the  burning  fire  of  curiosity 
in  his  own  heart,  after  which  there  might  be  time 
enough  for  his  second  duty,  of  assisting  to  extinguish 
the  fire  in  his  master's  mansion.  Falkland,  however, 
misses  the  absentee.  To  pursue  him,  to  collar  him, 
and,  we  may  hope,  to  kick  him,  are  the  work  of  a 
moment.  Had  Caleb  found  time  for  accomplishing 
his  inquest  ?  I  really  forget ,  out  no  matter.  Either 
now,  or  at  some  luckier  nour,  he  does  so :  he  becomes 
master  of  Falkland's  secret — consequently,  as  both 
fancy,  of  Falkland's  life.  At  this  point  commences  a 
Bight  of  Caleb,  and  a  chasing  of  Falkland,  in  order  tc 
vatch  bis  motions,  which  forms  the  most  spirited  part 


WILLIAM    GODWIN.  <>-«J 

>f  the  Story.  Mr.  Godwin  tells  us  that  he  derived  this 
situation,  the  continual  flight  and  continual  pursuit, 
from  a  South  American  tradition  of  some  Spanish 
vengeance.  Always  the  Spaniard  was  riding  in  tt 
any  given  town  on  the  road,  when  his  d<fttined  victim 
was  riding  out  at  the  other  end ;  so  that  the  relations 
of  "  whereabouts "  were  never  for  a  moment  lost :  the 
trail  was  perfect.  Now,  this  might  be  possible  in  cer- 
tain countries ;  but  in  England  !  —  heavens !  could 
not  Caleb  double  upon  his  master,  or  dodge  round  a 
gate  (like  Falkland  when  he  murdered  Mr.  Tyrrel),  or 
take  a  headlong  plunge  into  London,  where  the  scent 
might  have  lain  cold  for  forty  years?*  Other  acci- 
dents by  thousands  would  interrupt  the  chase.  On  the 
hundredth  day,  for  instance,  after  the  flying  parties 
had  become  well  known  on  the  road,  Mr.  Falkland 
would  drive  furiously  up  to  sotne  King's  Head  oi 
White  Lion,  putting  his  one  question  to  the  waiter, 
"  Where 's  Caleb  ? "  And  the  waiter  would  reply, 
'•  Where  's  Mr.  Caleb,  did  yon  say,  sir  ?  Why,  he 
went  off*  at  five  by  the  Highflyer,  booked  inside  the 
\'hole  way  to  Doncaster;  and  Mr.  Caleb  is  now,  sir, 
precisely  forty-five  miles  ahead."  Then  would  Falk- 
land furiously  demand  "  four  horses  on ; "  and  then 
would  the  waiter  plead  a  contested  election  in  excuse 
for   having  no  horses   at    all.      Really,   for   dramatic 

*  "  Forty  years  :  "  so  long,  according  to  my  recollection  of 
Boswell,  did  Dr.  Johnson  wal^i  about  London  before  he  met  an 
jld  Derbyshire  friend,  who  also  had  been  walking  about  Lon 
Ion  with  the  same  punctual  regularity  for  every  day  of  the 
lame  forty  y^rs.  The  nodes  of  intersection  did  not  come  round 
tooner 


342  WIU.IAM    uODWIN. 

effect,  it  is  a  pity  that  the  tale  were  not  translated  for 
ward  to  the  days  of  railroads.  Sublime  would  look 
the  fiery  pursuit,  and  the  panic-stricken  flight,  when 
racing  from  Fleetwood  to  Liverpool,  to  Birmingham, 
to  London ;  then  smoking  along  the  Great  Western, 
where  Mr.  Caleb's  forty-five  miles  ahead  would  avail 
him  little,  to  Bristol,  to  Exeter  j  thence  doubling  back 
upon  London,  like  the  steam  leg  in  Mr.  H.  G.  Bell's 
admirable  story. 

But,  after  all,  what  was  the  object,  and  what  the 
result  of  all  this  racing  ?  Once  I  saw  two  young  men 
facing  each  other  upon  a  high  road,  but  at  a  furlong's 
distance,  and  playing  upon  the  foolish  terrors  of  a 
young  woman  by  continually  heading  her  back  from 
one  to  the  other,  as  alternately  she  approached  towards 
either.  Signals  of  some  dreadful  danger  in  the  north 
being  made  by  the  northern  man,  back  the  poor  girl 
flew  towards  the  southern,  who,  in  his  turn,  threw  out 
pantomimic  'warnings  of  an  equal  danger  to  the  south. 
And  thus,  like  a  tennis-ball,  the  simple  creature  kept 
rebounding  from  one  to  the  other,  until  she  could  move 
no  further  through  sheer  fatigue ;  and  then  first  the 
question  occurred  to  her.  What  was  it  that  she  had 
been  running  from  ?  The  same  question  seems  to 
have  struck  at  last  upon  the  obtuse  mind  of  Mr.  Caleb ; 
it  was  quite  as  easy  to  play  the  part  of  hunter,  as  that 
of  hunted  game,  and  likely  to  be  cheaper.  He  turns 
tkerefore  sharp  round  upon  his  master,  who  in  his  turn 
is  disposed  to  fly,  when  suddenly  the  sport  is  brought 
to  c  dead  lock  by  a  constable,  who  tells  the  murdering 
bquire  that  he  is  "  wanted."  Caleb  has  lodged  informa 
tions  ;  all  parties  meet  for  a  final  "  reunion  "  before  th* 


WILLIAM    GODWIN.  545 

nagistrate;  Mr.  Falkland,  oddly  enough,  regards  him- 
lelf  in  the  light  of  an  ill-used  man ;  which  theory  of 
the  case,  even  more  oddly,  seems  to  be  adopted  by 
Mr.  Gilfillan ;  but,  for  all  that  he  can  say,  Mr.  Falk- 
land is  fully  committed  ;  and  as  laws  were  made  for 
every  degree,  it  is  plain  that  Mr.  Falkland  (however 
much  of  a  pattern-man)  is  in  some  danger  of  swing- 
ing. But  the  catastrophe  is  intercepted ;  a  novelist 
may  raise  his  hero  to  the  peerage ;  he  may  even  con- 
fer the  garter  upon  him  ;  but  it  shocks  against  usage 
and  courtesy  that  he  should  hang  him.  The  circu- 
lating libraries  would  rise  in  mutiny,  if  he  did.  And 
therefore  it  is  satisfactory  to  believe  (for  all  along  I 
■peak  from  memory),  that  Mr.  Falkland  reprieves  him- 
self from  the  gallows  by  dying  of  exhaustion  from  his 
travels. 

Such  is  the  fable  of  '•  Caleb  Williams,"  upon  which, 
by  the  way,  is  built,  I  think,  Colman's  drama  of  "The 
Iron  Chest."  I  have  thought  it  worth  the  trouble 
(whether  for  the  reader,  or  for  myself),  of  a  flying 
abstract ;  and  chiefly  with  a  view  to  the  strange  col- 
lision of  opinions  as  to  the  merit  of  the  work;  some, 
as  I  have  said,  exalting  it  to  the  highest  class  of  novels, 
others  depressing  it  below  the  lowest  of  those  which 
achieve  any  notoriety.  They  who  vote  against  it  are 
in  a  large  majority.  The  Germans,  whose  literature 
offers  a  free  port  to  all  the  eccentricities  of  the  earth 
have  never  welcomed  "  Caleb  Williams."  Chenier,  the 
ruling  litterateur  of  Paris,  m  the  days  of  Napoleon, 
when  reviewing  the  litei^ture  of  his  own  day,  dis- 
misses Caleb  contei-nptuously  as  coarse  and  vulgar- 
It  i?  not  therefore  to  tne  German  taste ;  it  is  not  to  the 


344  WILLUM    viODWlN. 

French.  And  as  to  our  own  country,  Mr.  Gilnllau  it 
undoubtedly  wrong  in  supposing  that  it  "  is  in  every 
circulating  library,  and  needs,  more  frequently  than 
almost  any  novel,  to  be  replaced."  If  this  were  so,  in 
presence  of  the  immortal  novels  which  for  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  have  been  gathering  into  the 
gamers  of  our  English  literature,  I  should  look  next 
to  see  the  race  of  men  returning  from  venison  and 
wheat  to  their  primitive  diet  of  acorns.  But  I  believe 
that  the  number  of  editions  yet  published,  would  at 
once  discredit  this  account  of  the  book's  popularity. 
Neither  is  it  likely,  d  priori,  that  such  a  popularity 
could  arise  even  for  a  moment.  The  interest  from 
secret  and  vindictive  murder,  though  coarse,  is  un- 
doubtedly deep.  What  would  make  us  thrill  m  real 
life,  —  the  case  for  instance  of  a  neighbor  lying  under 
the  suspicion  of  such  a  murder,  —  would  make  us  thrill 
in  a  novel.  But  then  it  must  be  managed  with  art, 
and  covered  with  mystery.  For  a  long  time  it  must 
continue  doubtful,  both  as  to  the  fact,  and  the  circum 
stances,  and  the  motive.  Whereas,  in  the  case  ol 
Mr.  Falkland,  there  is  little  mystery  of  any  kind ;  not 
much,  and  only  for  a  short  time,  to  Caleb ;  and  none 
at  all  to  the  reader,  who  could  have  relieved  the  curi- 
osity of  Mr.  Caleb  from  the  first,  if  he  were  placed  in 
lommunication  with  him. 

Differing  so  much  from  Mr.  Gilfillan,  as  to  the 
effectiveness  of  the  novel,  I  am  only  the  more  im- 
pressed vv'ith  the  eloquent  images  and  expressions  by 
*'hich  he  has  conveyed  his  own  sense  of  its  power. 
Power  there  must  be,  though  many  of  us  canno 
discern    it,  to   react  upon   us,  through  impressions  s« 


WILLIAM    GODWIN.  84A 

powerful  in  other  minds.  Some  of  Mr.  Gilfillan's  im- 
pressions, as  they  are  clothed  in  striking  images  by 
himself,  I  will  here  quote  :  —  "  His,"  Godwin's  "  heat  ia 
never  that  of  the  sun  with  all  his  beams  around  him ; 
but  of  the  round,  rayless  orb  seen  shining  from  the 
summit  of  Mont  Blanc,  still  and  stripped  in  the  black 
ether.  He  has  more  passion  than  imagination.  And 
even  his  passion  he  has  learned  more  by  sympathy 
than  by  personal  feeling.  And,  amid  his  most  tem- 
pestuous scenes,  you  see  the  calm  and  stern  eye  of 
philosophic  analysis  looking  on.  His  imagery  is  not 
copious,  nor  always  original ;  but  its  sparseness  is  its 
strength  —  the  flash  comes  sudden  as  the  lightning.  No 
preparatory  flourish,  or  preliminary  sound ;  no  sheets 
of  useless  splendor:  each  figure  is  a  fork  of  fire, 
which  strikes  and  needs  no  second  blow.  Nay,  often 
his  images  are  singularly  common-place,  and  you 
wonder  how  they  move  you  so,  till  you  resolve  this 
into  the  power  of  the  hand  which  jaculates  its  own 
energy  in  them."  And  again,  "  His  novels  resemble 
the  paintings  of  John  Martin,  being  a  gallery,  nay  a 
world,  in  themselves.  In  both,  monotony  and  man- 
nerism are  incessant ;  but  the  monotony  is  that  of  the 
sounding  deep,  the  mannerism  that  of  the  thunderbolts 
of  heaven.  Martin  might  append  to  his  one  continual 
3ash  of  lightning,  which  is  present  in  all  his  pictures,  — 
low  to  reveal  a  deluge,  now  to  garland  the  brow  of  a 
Lend  —  now  to  rend  the  veil  of  a  temple,  and  now  to 
guide  the  invaders  through  the  breach  of  a  city,  —  the 
words,  John  Martin,  his  viark.  Godwin's  novels  are 
Qot  less  terriblv  distinguished  to  those  who  understand 


546  WILLTAJI    GODWIN. 

their  cipher—  .he  deep  scar  of  misery  branded  upoB 
the  brow  of  the  '  victim  of  society.' " 

And  as  to  the  earliest  of  these  novels,  the  "  Caleb 
Williams,"  he  says,  "  There  is  about  it  a  stronger 
suction  and  swell  of  interest  than  in  any  novel  we 
know,  with  the  exception  of  one  or  two  of  Sir 
Walter's.  You  are  in  it  ere  you  are  aware.  You 
put  your  hand  playfully  into  a  child's,  and  are  sur- 
prised to  find  it  held  in  the  grasp  of  a  giant.  It 
becomes  a  fascination.  Struggle  you  may,  and  kick, 
but  he  holds  you  by  his  glittering  eye."  In  reference, 
again,  to  "  St.  Leon,"  the  next  most  popular  of  God- 
win's novels,  there  is  a  splendid  passage  upon  the 
glory  and  pretensions  of  the  ancient  alchemist,  in  the 
infancy  of  scientific  chemistry.  It  rescues  the  char- 
acter from  vulgarity,  and  displays  it  idealized  as 
sometimes,  perhaps,  it  must  have  been.  I  am  sorry 
that  it  is  too  long  for  extracting ;  but,  in  compensation 
to  the  reader,  I  quote  two  very  picturesque  sentences, 
describing  what,  to  Mr.  GilfiUan,  appears  the  quality 
of  Godwin's  style  :  —  "  It  is  a  smooth  succession  of  short 
and  simple  sentences,  each  clear  as  crystal,  and  none 
ever  distracting  the  attention  from  the  subject  to  its 
own  construction.  It  is  a  style  in  which  you  cannot 
explain  hov  the  total  efiect  rises  out  of  the  individual 
parts,  and  which  is  forgotten  as  entirely  during  perusal 
as  in  the  pane  of  glass  through  which  you  gaze  at  a 
comet  or  a  star."  Elsewhere,  and  limiting  his  remark 
to  the  style  of  the  "  Caleb  Williams,"  he  says  finely  :  — 
"  The  writing,  though  far  from  elegant  or  finished,  hat 
in   parts   the    rude    power   of    those   sentences   whiclr 


WILLIAM   GODWIN.  347 

:riminals,  martyrs,  and  maniacs,  scrawl  upon  their  walla 
or  windows  in  the  eloquence  of  desperation."  * 

These  things  perplex  me.  The  possibility  that  any 
individual  in  the  minority  can  have  regarded  Godwin 
with  such  an  eye,  seems  to  argue  that  we  of  the 
majority  must  be  wrong.  Deep  impressions  seem  to 
justify  themselves.  We  may  have  failed  to  perceive 
things  which  are  in  the  object;  but  it  is  not  so  easy 
for  others  to  perceive  things  which  are  not ;  or,  at 
least,  hardly  in  a  case  like  this,  where  (though  a 
minority)  these  "  others  "  still  exist  in  number  sufficient 
to  check  and  to  confirm  each  other.  On  the  other 
hand,  Godwin's  name  seems  sinking  out  of  remem- 
brance; and  he  is  remembered  less  by  the  novels  that 
succeeded,  or  by  the  philosophy  that  he  abjured,  than 
as  the  man  that  had  Mary  Wolstonecraft  for  his  wife, 
Mrs.  Shelley  for  his  daughter,  and  the  immortal  Shelley 
as  his  son-in-law. 


*  "  Desperation."  Yet,  as  martyrs  are  concerned  in  the  pic- 
tare,  it  ought  to  have  been  said,  '  of  desperation  and  of  Ikrewell 
lo  euth,"  or  something  eqaivalent 


JOHN  FOSTER. 

Me.  GiLFiLLAN*  possibly  overrates  the  power  of  this 
essayist,  and  the  hold  which,  he  has  upon  the  public 
mind.  It  is  singular,  meantime,  that  whatever  might 
be  its  degree,  much  or  little,  originally  his  influence 
was  due  to  an  accident  of  position  which  in  some 
countries  would  have  tended  to  destroy  it.  He  was  a 
Dissenter.  Now,  in  England,  tJutt  sometimes  operates 
as  an  advantage.  To  dissent  from  the  established 
form  of  religion,  which  could  not  affect  the  value  of  a 
writer's  speculations,  may  easily  become  the  means 
of  diffusing  their  reputation,  as  well  as  of  facilitatinjy 
their  introduction.  And  in  the  following  way :  The 
great  mass  of  the  reading  population  are  absolutely  in 
different  to  such  deflexions  from  the  national  standard 
The  man,  suppose,  is  a  Baptist :  but  to  be  a  Baptist  is 
itill  to  be  a  Protestant,  and  a  Protestant  agreeing  with 
his  countrymen  in  everything  essential  to  purity  of 
life  and  faith.  So  far  there  is  the  most  entire  neutrality 
in  the  public  mind,  and  readiness  to  receive  any  im 
ression  which  the  man's  powers  enable  him  to  make 

*  "  Gallery  of  Literary  Portraita." 


JOH^    FOSTER.  349 

There  is,  indeed,  so  absolute  a  careiCSsness  for  all 
inoperative  shades  of  religious  difference  lurking  in 
the  background,  that  even  the  ostentatiously  libera) 
hardly  feel  it  a  case  for  parading  their  liberality.  But 
on  the  other  hand,  his  own  sectarian  party  are  as  ener 
getic  to  push  him  forward  as  all  others  are  passive. 
They  favor  him  as  a  brother,  and  also  as  one  whose 
credit  will  react  upon  their  common  sect.  And  this 
favor,  pressing  like  a  wedge  upon  the  unresisting 
neutrality  of  the  public,  soon  succeeds  in  gaining  for 
any  able  writer  among  sectjirians  an  exaggerated  reputa- 
tion. Nobody  is  against  him ;  and  a  small  section 
acts _/br  him  in  a  spirit  of  resolute  partisanship. 

To  this  accident  of  social  position,  and  to  his  con- 
nection with  the  Eclectic.  Review,  Mr.  Foster  owed 
his  first  advantageous  presentation  before  the  public. 
The  misfortune  of  many  an  able  writer  is,  not  that  he 
is  rejected  by  the  world,  but  that  virtually  he  is  never 
Drought  conspicuously  befoie  them :  he  is  not  dis- 
missed unfavorably,  but  he  is  never  effectually  intro- 
duced. From  this  calamity,  at  the  outset,  Foster  was 
saved  by  his  party.  I  happened  myself  to  be  in 
Bristol  at  the  moment  when  his  four  essays  were  first 
issuing  from  the  press ;  and  everywhere  I  heard  so 
pointed  an  account  of  the  expectations  connected  with 
Foster  by  his  religious  party,  that  I  made  it  a  duty  to 
read  his  book  without  delay.  It  is  a  distant  incident 
to  look  back  upon  —  gone  by  for  more  than  thirty 
vears ;  but  I  remember  my  farst  impressions,  which 
^ere  these  .  —  first.  That  the  novelty  or  weight  of  the 
ifiinking  was  hardly  sufficient  tc  account  for  the  sudden 
popularity  without  some  extra  influence  at  work;  and 


550  JOHN    FOSTER. 

secondly,  That  the  contrast  was  remarkable  between 
die  uncolored  style  of  his  general  diction,  and  the 
brilliant  felicity  of  occasional  images  embroidered 
upon  the  sober  ground  of  his  text.  The  splendor  did 
not  seem  spontaneous,  or  growing  up  as  part  dt  the 
texture  within  the  loom ;  it  was  intermitting,  ind 
seemed  as  extraneous  to  the  substance  as  the  flowers 
which  are  chalked  for  an  evening  upon  the  floors  of 
ball-rooms. 

Subsequently,  1  remarked  two  other  features  of 
difference  in  his  manner,  neither  of  which  has  been 
overlooked  by  Mr.  GilfiUan,  namely,  first,  The  unsocial 
gloom  of  his  eye,  travelling  over  all  things  with 
dissatisfaction ;  second  (which  in  our  days  seemed 
unaccountable),  the  remarkable  limitation  of  his  knowl- 
edge. You  might  suppose  the  man,  equally  by  his 
Ignorance  of  passing  things  and  by  his  ungenial 
moroseness,  to  be  a  specimen  newly  turned  out  from 
the  silent  cloisters  of  La  Trappe.  A  monk  he  seemed 
by  the  repulsion  of  his  cloistral  feelings,  and  a  monk 
by  the  superannuation  of  his  knowledge.  Both  pecu- 
liarities he  drew  in  part  from  that  same  sectarian 
Dosition,  operating  for  evil,  to  which,  in  another 
direction  as  a  conspicuous  ndvantage,  he  had  been 
ndebted  for  his  favorabie  public  introduction.  It  is 
not  that  Foster  was  generally  misanthropic ;  neither 
was  he,  as  a  sectarian,  "  a  good  hater  "  at  any  special 
tngle ;  that  is,  he  was  not  a  zealous  hater ;  but,  by 
temperament,  and  in  some  measure  by  situation,  aw 
one  p  edged  to  a  polemic  attitude  by  his  sect,  he  was 
\  general  disliker  and  a  general  suspecter.  His  con 
^deiice  in  human  nature  was  small ;    for  he   saw  th« 


JOHN    FOSTER.  351 

clay  of  the  composite  statue,  but  not  its  gold,  and 
apparently  his  satisfaction  with  himself  was  not  much 
greater.  Inexhaustible  was  his  jealousy;  and  for  that 
reason  his  philanthropy  was  everywhere  checked  by 
frost  and  wintry  chills.  This  blight  of  asceticism  in 
his  nature  is  not  of  a  kind  to  be  briefly  illustrated,  for 
It  lies  diffused  through  the  texture  of  his  writings.  But 
of  his  other  monkish  characteristic,  his  abstraction 
from  the  movement  and  life  of  his  own  age,  I  may 
give  this  instance,  which  I  observed  by  accident  about 
a  year  since  in  some  late  edition  of  his  Essays. 
He  was  speaking  of  the  term  radical  as  used  to 
designate  a  large  political  party  ;  but  so  slightly  was 
he  acquainted  with  the  history  of  that  party,  so  little 
had  he  watched  the  growth  of  this  important  interest 
m  our  political  system,  that  he  supposes  the  term 
"  Radical "  to  express  a  mere  scoff  or  movement  of 
irony  from  the  antagonists  of  that  party.  It  stands, 
as  he  fancies,  upon  the  same  footing  as  "  Puritan," 
"  Roundhead,"  &c.,  amongst  our  fathers,  or  "  Swaddler,' 
applied  to  the  Evangelicals  amongst  ourselves.  This 
may  seem  a  trifle ;  nor  do  I  mention  the  mistake  for 
any  evil  which  it  can  lead  to,,  but  for  the  dreamy  inat- 
tention which  it  argues  to  what  was  most  important  in 
the  agitations  around  him.  It  may  cause  nothing ;  but 
how  much  does  it  presume  ?  Could  a  man,  interestea 
in  the  motion  of  human  principles,  or  the  revolutions  of 
his  own  country,  have  failed  to  notice  the  rise  of  a  new 
party   which  loudly   proclaimed   its  own   mission  and 

nirposes  in  the  very  name  which  it  assumed  ?  The 
•erm    '  Radical "  was  used  elliptically  :  Mr.  Hunt,  and 

il   about   him,   constantly   gave   out    that   they   were 


359  JOHN    FOSTRR. 

reformers  who  went  to  the  root  —  radical  retormers ; 
whilst  all  previous  political  parties  they  held  to  be 
merely  masquerading  as  reformers,  or,  at  least,  want- 
ing in  the  determination  to  go  deep  enough.  The 
party  name  "  Radical "  was  no  insult  of  enemies ;  it 
was  a  cognizance  self-adopted  by  the  party  which  il 
designates,  and  worn  with  pride  ;  and  whatever  might 
be  the  degree  of  persoTud  weight  belonging  to  Mr. 
Hunt,  no  man,  who  saw  into  the  composition  of  society 
amongst  ourselves,  could  doubt  that  his  principles  were 
destined  to  a  most  extensive  diffusion  —  were  sure  of 
a  permanent  settlement  amongst  the  great  party  in- 
terests—  and,  therefore,  sure  of  disturbing  thencefor- 
wards  forever  the  previous  equilibrium  of  forces  in 
our  English  social  system.  To  mistake  the  origin  or 
history  of  a  word  is  nothing;  but  to  mistake  it,  when 
that  history  of  a  word  ran  along  with  the  history  of  a 
thing  destined  to  change  all  the  aspects  of  our  English 
present  and  future,  implies  a  sleep  of  Epimenides 
amongst  the  shocks  which  are  unsettling  the  realities  of 
earth. 

The  four  original  essays,  by  which  Foster  was  first 
known  to  the  public,  are  those  by  which  he  is  still  best 
known.  It  cannot  be  said  of  them  that  they  have  any 
practical  character  calculated  to  serve  the  uses  of  life 
They  terminate  in  speculations  that  apply  themselves 
little  enough  to  any  business  of  the  world.  Whethe. 
a  man  should  write  memoirs  of  himself  cannot  have 
any  personal  interest  for  one  reader  in  a  myriad, 
And  two  of  the  essays  have  even  a  misleading  ten 
iency.  That  upon  *'  Decision  of  Character  "  places  a 
rery  exaggerated  valuation  upon  one  quality  of  human 


JOHN    FOSTER. 


353 


temperament,  which  is  neither  rare,  nor  at  a.l  necessa- 
rily allied  with  the  most  elevated  features  of  moral 
grandeur.  Coleridge,  because  he  had  no  business  tal- 
ents himself,  admired  them  preposterously  in  others  ; 
or  fancied  them  vast  when  they  existed  only  in  a  slight 
degree.  And,  uj)on  the  same  principle,  I  suspect  thai 
Mr.  Foster  rated  so  highly  the  quality  of  decision  in 
matters  of  action,  chiefly  because  he  wanted  it  himself 
Obstinacy  is  a  gift  more  extensively  sown  than  Foster 
was  willing  to  admit.  And  his  scale  of  appreciation, 
if  it  were  practically  applied  to  the  men  of  history, 
would  lead  to  judgments  immoderately  perverse.  Mil- 
ton would  rank  far  below  Luther.  In  reality,  as  Mr. 
GilfiUan  justly  remarks,  "  Decision  of  character  is  not, 
strictly,  a  moral  power ;  and  it  is  extremely  dangerous 
to  pay  that  homage  to  any  intellectual  quality,  which  is 
sacred  to  virtue  alone."  But  even  this  estimate  must 
often  tend  to  exaggeration ;  for  the  most  inexorable 
decision  is  much  more  closely  connected  with  bodily 
diflferences  of  temperament  than  with  any  superiority 
of  mind.  It  rests  too  much  upon  a  physical  basis ; 
and,  of  all  qualities  whatever,  it  is  the  most  liable  to 
vicious  varieties  of  degeneration.  The  worst  result 
from  this  essay  is  not  merely  speculative ;  it  trains  the 
feelings  to  false  admirations;  and  upon  a  path  which 
is  the  more  dangerous,  as  the  besetting  temptation  of 
our  English  life  lies  already  towards  an  estimate  much 
too  high  of  all  qualities  bearing  upon  the  active  and  the 
:)ractical.     We  need  no  spur  in  that  direction. 

The   essay   upon   the    use    of   technically   religicaa 
anguage  seems  even  worse  hj    its  tendency,  although 
viie    necessities   of   the  subject   will    forever  ner.tralize 
23 


AM  JOHN    FOSTER 

Foster's  advice.  Mr.  Gilfillan  is,  in  this  instance  dis- 
posed to  defend  him  :  *'  Foster  does  not  ridicule  the 
use,  but  the  abuse,  of  technical  language,  as  applied 
to  divine  things;  and  proposes,  merely  as  an  experi- 
ment, to  translate  it  in  accommodation  to  fastidious 
tastes."  Safely,  however,  it  may  be  assumed,  that,  in 
all  such  cases,  the  fastidious  taste  is  but  another  aspect 
of  hatred  to  religious  themes,  —  a  hatred  which,  there 
is  neither  justice  nor  use  in  attempting  to  propitiate. 
Cant  words  ought  certainly  to  be  proscribed,  as  de- 
grading to  the  majesty  of  religion :  the  word  "  prayer- 
ful," for  instance,  so  commonly  used  of  late  years, 
seems  objectionable ;  and  such  words  as  "  savory," 
which  is  one  of  those  cited  by  Foster  himself,  are 
absolutely  abominable,  when  applied  to  spiritual  or 
mtellectual  objects.  It  is  not  fastidiousness,  but  man- 
liness and  good  feeling,  which  are  outraged  by  such 
vulgarities.  On  the  other  hand,  the  word  "  grace " 
expresses  an  idea  so  exclusively  belonging  to  Chris- 
tianity, and  so  indispensable  to  the  wholeness  of  its 
philosophy,  that  any  attempt  to  seek  for  equivalent 
terms  of  mere  human  growth,  or  amongst  the  vocabu- 
laries of  mere  worldly  usage,  must  terminate  in  con- 
scious failure,  or  else  in  utter  self-delusion.  Chris- 
tianity, having  introduced  many  ideas  that  are  absolutely 
new,  such  as  faith,  charity,  holiness,  the  nature 
of  God,  of  human  frailty,  &c.,  is  as  much  entitled 
(nay  as  much  obliged  and  pledged)  to  a  peculiar  lan- 
guage and  terminology  as  chemistry.  Let  a  man  try 
if  he  can  find  a  word  in  the  market-place  fitted  to  be 
the  substitute  for  the  word  gas  or  alkali.  The  danger 
n   fact,   li'is   exactly  in  the   opposite  direction   to  tha 


JOHN    FOSTER.  355 

ndicated  by  Foster.  No  fear  that  men  of  elegant 
taste  should  be  revolted  by  the  use  of  what,  after  all, 
is  scriptural  language  ;  for  it  is  plain  that  he  who  could 
be  so  revolted,  wants  nothing  seriously  with  religion. 
But  there  is  great  fear  that  any  general  disposition  to 
angle  for  readers  of  extra  refinement,  or  to  court  the 
effeminately  fastidious,  by  sacrificing  the  majestic  sim- 
plicities of  scriptural  diction,  would  and  must  end  in 
a  ruinous  dilution  of  religious  truths ;  along  with  the 
characteristic  language  of  Christian  philosophy,  would 
exhale  its  characteristic  doctrines. 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT.* 

This  man,  who  would  have  drawn  in  the  scales 
against  a  select  vestry  of  Fosters,  is  for  the  present 
deeper  in  the  world's  oblivion  than  the  man  with  whom 
I  here  connect  his  name.  That  seems  puzzling.  For, 
if  Hazlitt  were  misanthropic,  so  was  Foster:  both  as 
writers  were  splenetic  and  more  than  peevish ;  but 
Hazlitt  requited  his  reader  for  the  pain  of  travelling 
through  so  gloomy  an  atmosphere,  by  the  rich  vegeta- 
tion which  his  teeming  intellect  threw  up  as  it  moved 
along.  The  soil  in  his  brain  was  of  a  volcanic  fertility  ; 
whereas,  in  Foster,  as  in  some  tenacious  clay,  if  the 
life  were  deep,  it  was  slow  and  sullen  in  its  throes. 
The  reason  for  at  all  speaking  of  them  in  connec- 
tion is,  that  both  were  essayists ;  neither  in  fact  writing 
anything  of  note  except  essays,  moral  or  critical ;  and 
both  were  bred  at  the  feet  of  Dissenters.  But  how 
different  were  the  results  from  that  connection  !  Foster 
turned  it  to  a  blessing,  winning  the  jewel  that  is  most 
ef  all  to  be  coveted,  peace  and  the  fallentis  semita 
9ita.     Hazlitt,  on  the  other  hand,  sailed  wilfully  away 

*  "  Qallery  of  Literarji  Portraits."     By  Qeorge  Gilfillan. 


V71LLUM    HAZ^ITT.  357 

from  this  sheltering  harbor  of  his  father's  profession,  — 
for  sheltering  it  might  have  proved  to  him,  and  dia 
prove  to  his  youth, — only  to  toss  ever  afterwards  as  a 
drifting  wreck  at  the  mercy  of  storms.  Hazlitt  was 
not  one  of  those  who  could  have  illustrated  the  benefits 
of  a  connection  with  a  sect,  that  is,  with  a  small  confed- 
eration hostile  by  position  to  a  larger ;  for  the  hostility 
from  without,  ii;  order  to  react,  presumes  a  concord 
from  within.  Nor  does  his  case  impeach  the  correct- 
ness of  what  I  have  said  on  that  subject  in  speaking 
of  Foster.  He  owed  no  introduction  to  the  Dissenters  ; 
but  it  was  because  he  would  owe  none.  The  Ishmael- 
ite,  whose  hand  is  against  every  man,  yet  smiles  at 
the  approach  of  a  brother,  and  gives  the  salutation  of 
"  Peace  be  with  you  !  "  to  the  tribe  of  his  father.  But 
Hazlitt  smiled  upon  no  man,  nor  exchanged  tokens  of 
peace  with  the  nearest  of  fraternities.  Wieland,  in  his 
•'  Oberon,"  says  of  a  benign  patriarch  — 

**  His  eye  a  smile  on  all  creation  beamed." 

Travestied  as  to  one  word,  the  line  would  have  described 
Hazlitt  — 

"  His  eye  a  scowl  on  all  creation  beamed." 

This  inveterate  misanthropy  was  constitutional ;  exas- 
perated it  certainly  had  been  by  accidents  of  life,  by 
disappointments,  by  mortifications,  by  insults,  and  still 
more  by  having  wilfully  placed  himself  in  collision 
from  the  first  with  all  the  interests  that  were  in  the 
sunshine  of  this  world,  and  with  all  the  persons  that 
were  then  powerful  in  England.  But  my  impression 
«vas,  if  I  had  a  right  to  have  any  impression  with  regard 
V)  one   whom  I  knew  so  slightly,  that   no  change  of 


558  WILLIAM    HAZLITT. 

position  or  of  fortunes  could  have  brought  Hazlitt  into 
reconciliation  with  the  fashion  of  this  world,  or  of  this 
England,  or  "  this  now."  It  seemed  to  me  that  he 
hated  those  whom  hollow  custom  obliged  him  to  call  his 
"  friends,"  considerably  more  than  those  whom  notori- 
ous differences  of  opinion  entitled  him  to  rank  as  his 
enemies.  At  least  within  the  ring  of  politics  this  waa 
so.  Between  those  particular  Whigs  whom  literature 
had  connected  him  with,  and  the  whole  gang  of  mj 
Conservatives,  he  showed  the  same  difference  in  his 
mode  of  fencing  and  parrying,  and  even  in  his  style  of 
civilities,  as  between  the  domestic  traitor  hiding  a 
stiletto  among  his  robes  of  peace,  and  the  bold  enemy 
who  sends  a  trumpet  before  him,  and  rides  up  sword- 
in-hand  against  your  gates.  Whatever  is  —  so  much 
I  conceive  to  have  been  a  fundamental  lemma  for 
Hazlitt  —  is  wrong.  So  much  he  thought  it  safe  to 
postulate.  Hofvo  it  was  wrong,  might  require  an  im- 
practicable investigation ;  you  might  fail  for  a  century 
to  discover :  but  thai  it  was  wrong,  he  nailed  down  as 
a  point  of  faith,  that  could  stand  out  against  all  counter- 
presumptions  from  argument,  or  counter-evidences  from 
experience.  A  friend  of  his  it  was,  a  friend  wishing 
to  love  him,  and  admiring  him  almost  to  extravagance, 
who  told  me,  in  illustration  of  the  dark,  sinister  gloom 
which  sat  forever  upon  Hazlitt's  countenance  and 
gestures,  that  involuntarily  when  Hazlitt  put  his  hand 
within  his  waistcoat  (as  a  mere  unconscious  trick  of 
liabit),  he  himself  felt  a  sudden  recoil  of  fear,  as  from 
Dne  who  was  searching  for  a  hidden  dagger.  Like  "  a 
Moore  of  Malabar,"  as  described  in  the  Faery  Queer 
»t  intervals  Hazlitt  threw  up  his  angry  eyes,  and  darn 


WILLUM    HAZUTT.  «i69 

locks,  as  if  wishing  to  affront  the  sun,  or  to  search 
the  air  for  hostility.  And  the  same  friend,  on  another 
occasion,  described  the  sort  of  feudal  fidelity  to  his 
belligerent  duties,  which  in  company  seemed  to  ani- 
mate Hazlitt,  as  though  he  were  mounting  guard  on  all 
the  citadels  of  malignity,  under  some  sacramentum 
militaire,  by  the  following  trait,  —  that,  if  it  had  hap- 
pened to  Hazlitt  to  be  called  out  of  the  room,  or  to 
be  withdrawn  for  a  moment  from  the  current  of  the 
general  conversation,  by  a  fit  of  abstraction,  or  by  a 
private  whisper  to  himself  from  some  person  sitting  at 
his  elbow,  always,  on  resuming  his  place  as  a  party  to 
what  might  be  called  the  public  business  of  the  compa- 
ny, he  looked  round  him  with  a  mixed  air  of  suspicion 
and  defiance,  such  as  seemed  to  challenge  everybody  by 
some  stern  adjuration  into  revealing  whether,  during  his 
own  absence  or  inattention,  anything  had  been  said 
demanding  condign  punishment  at  his  hands.  "Has 
any  man  uttered  or  presumed  to  insinuate,"  he  seemed 
to  insist  upon  knowing,  "  during  this  interregnum, 
things  that  I  ought  to  proceed  against  as  treasonable 
to  the  interests  which  I  defend  ? "  He  had  the  unrest- 
ing irritability  of  Rousseau,  but  in  a  nobler  shape ; 
for  Rousseau  transfigured  every  possible  act  or  design 
of  his  acquaintances  into  some  personal  relation  to 
himself.  The  vile  act  was  obviously  meant,  as  a  child 
could  understand,  to  injure  the  person  of  Rousseau,  or 
his  interests,  or  his  reputatioa  It  was  meant  to  wound 
his  feelings,  or  to  misrepresent  his  acts  calumniously, 
or  secretly  to  supplant  his  footing.  But,  on  the  con- 
trary, Hazlitt  viewed  all  personal  affronts  or  casual 
slights  towards  himself,  as  tending  to  something  more 


360  WlLLiAM    HAIUTT. 

general,  and  masking  under  a  pretended  horroi  of 
Hazlitt.  the  author,  a  real  hatred,  deeper  than  it  waf 
always  safe  to  avow,  for  those  social  interests  which  he 
was  reputed  to  defend.  "  It  was  not  Hazlitt  whom  the 
wretches  struck  at ;  no,  no  —  it  was  democracy,  or  it 
was  freedom,  or  it  was  Napoleon,  whose  shadow  they 
saw  in  the  rear  of  Hazlitt ;  and  Napoleon,  not  for  any- 
thing in  him  that  might  be  really  bad,  but  in  revenge 
of  that  consuming  wrath  against  the  thrones  of  Chris- 
tendom, for  which  (said  Hazlitt)  let  us  glorify  his  name 
eternally." 

Yet  Hazlitt,  like  other  men,  and  peihaps  with  more 
oitterness  than  other  men,  sought  for  love  and  for 
intervals  of  rest,  in  which  all  anger  might  sleep,  and 
enmity  might  be  laid  aside  like  a  travelling-dress,  aftei 
tumultuous  journeys  : 

•*  Though  the  sea-horse  on  the  ocean 
Own  no  dear  domestic  cave. 
Yet  he  slumbers  without  motion 
On  the  still  and  halcyon  wave. 

If,  on  windy  days,  the  raven 

Qambol  like  a  dancing  skiff. 
Not  the  less  he  loves  his  haven 

On  the  bosom  of  a  cliff. 

If  almost  with  eagle  pinion 

O'er  the  Alps  the  chamois  roam. 

Yet  he  has  some  small  dominion. 
Which,  no  doubt,  he  calls  his  home." 

But  Hazlitt,  restless  as  the  sea-horse,  as  the  raven, 
%9   the   chamois,  found  not   their  respites  from  storm 
!ie    sovight,   but    sought    in   vain.     And    for    him  the 


WlLLlAJil    HAZLITT.  361 

;iosing  stanza  of  that  little  poem  remained  true  to  his 
dying  hour.  In  the  person  of  the  "  Wandering  Jew," 
he  might  complain,  — 

"  Day  and  night  my  toils  redouble  : 
Never  nearer  to  the  goal. 
Night  and  day  I  feel  the  trouble 
Of  the  wanderer  in  my  souL" 

Domicile  he  had  not,  round  whose  heart'u  nis  affectio.w 
might  gather ;  rest  he  had  not  for  the  sole  of  his 
burning  foot.  One  chance  of  regaining  some  peace, 
or  a  chance  as  he  trusted  for  a  time,  was  torn  from 
him  at  the  moment  of  gathering  its  blossoms.  He 
had  been  divorced  from  his  wife,  not  by  the  law  of 
England,  which  would  have  argued  criminality  in  her, 
but  by  Scottish  law,  satisfied  with  some  proof  of 
frailty  in  himself.  Subsequently  he  became  deeply 
fascinated  by  a  young  woman,  in  no  very  elevated 
rank,  —  for  she  held  some  domestic  office  of  superin- 
tendence in  a  boarding-house  kept  by  her  father,  —  but 
of  interesting  person,  and  endowed  with  strong  intel- 
lectual sensibilities.  She  had  encouraged  Hazlitt ; 
had  gratified  him  by  reading  his  works  with  intelligent 
sympathy;  and,  under  what  form  of  duplicity  it  is 
hard  to  say,  had  partly  engaged  her  faith  to  Hazlitt 
as  his  future  wife,  whilst  secretly  she  was  holding  a 
correspondence,  too  tender  to  be  misinterpreted,  with 
a  gentlei'ian  resident  in  the  same  establishment.  Sus- 
picions v.ere  put  aside  for  a  time;  but  they  returned, 
and  gathered  too  thickly  for  Hazlitt's  penetration  to 
cheat  'tself  any  longer.  Once  and  forever  he  re- 
solved to  satisfy  himself.     On  a  Sunday,  fatal  to  hioi 


362  WILLIAM    HAZLITT. 

ind  his  farewell  hopes  of  domestic  happiness,  he  hua 
reason  to  believe  that  she,  whom  he  now  loved  tc 
excess,  had  made  some  appointment  out-of-doors  with 
his  rivil.  It  was  in  London  ;  and  through  the  crowds 
of  London,  Hazlitt  followed  her  steps  to  the  rendez- 
vous. Fancying  herself  lost  in  the  multitude  that 
streamed  through  Lincolns-inn-fields,  the  treacherous 
young  woman  met  her  more  favored  lover  without 
alarm,  and  betrayed,  too  clearly  for  any  further  decep- 
tion, the  state  of  her  affections  by  the  tenderness  of 
her  manner.  There  went  out  the  last  light  that  threw 
a  guiding  ray  over  the  storm-vexed  course  of  Hazlitt. 
He  was  too  much  in  earnest,  and  he  had  witnessed 
too  much,  to  be  deceived  or  appeased.  "I  whistled 
her  down  the  wind,"  was  his  own  account  of  the  catas- 
trophe ;  but,  in  doing  so,  he  had  torn  his  own  heart- 
strings, entangled  with  her  "jesses."  Neither  did  he, 
as  others  would  have  done,  seek  to  disguise  his  misfor- 
tune. On  the  contrary,  he  cared  not  for  the  ridicule 
attached  to  such  a  situation  amongst  the  unfeeling . 
the  wrench  within  had  been  too  profound  to  leave 
room  for  sensibility  to  the  sneers  outside.  A  fast 
friend  of  his  at  that  time,  and  one  who  never  ceased 
to  be  his  apologist,  described  him  to  me  as  having 
become  absolutely  maniacal  during  the  first  pressure 
of  this  alfliction.  He  went  about  proclaiming  the 
case,  and  msisting  on  its  details,  to  every  stranger 
that  would  listen.  He  even  published  the  whole  story 
to  the  world,  in  his  "  Modern  Pygmalion."  And  peo- 
ple generally,  who  could  not  be  aware  of  his  feelings 
or  the  way  in  which  this  treachery  acted  upon  his 
Tiind   as   a   ratification    of    all    other   treacheries   anc 


WILLIAM    EUZLITT.  365 

wrongs  that  he  had  suffered  through  life,  laughed  at 
lim,  or  expressed  disgust  for  him  as  too  coarsely 
indelicate  in  making  such  disclosures.  But  there  was 
no  indelicacy  in  such  an  act  of  confidence,  growing,  as 
it  did,  out  of  his  lacerated  heart.  It  was  an  explosion 
of  frenzy.  He  threw  out  his  clamorous  anguish  to  the 
clouds,  and  to  the  winds,  and  to  the  air ;  caring  not  who 
might  listen,  who  might  sympathize,  or  who  might  sneer. 
Pity  was  no  demand  of  his  ;  laughter  was  no  wrong : 
the  sole  necessity  for  him  was  —  to  empty  his  over- 
burdened  spirit. 

After  this  desolating  experience,  the  exasperation 
ot  Hazlitt's  political  temper  grew  fiercer,  darker, 
steadier.  His  "  Life  of  Napoleon "  was  prosecuted 
subsequently  to  this,  and  perhaps  under  this  remem- 
brance, as  a  reservoir  that  might  receive  all  the  vast 
overflows  of  his  wrath,  much  of  which  was  not  merely 
political,  or  in  a  spirit  of  bacchanalian  partisanship, 
but  was  even  morbidly  anti-social.  He  hated,  with 
all  his  heart,  every  institution  of  man,  and  all  his 
pretensions.  He  loathed  his  own  relation  to  the  human 
race. 

It  was  but  on  a  few  occasions  that  I  ever  met  Mr 
Hazlitt  myself;  and  those  occasions,  or  all  but  one, 
were  some  time  subsequent  to  the  case  of  female 
treachery  which  I  have  here  described.  Twice,  I 
think,  or  it  might  be  three  times,  we  walked  for  a 
I'ew  miles  together  :  it  was  in  London,  late  at  night, 
and  after  leaving  a  party.  Though  depressed  by  the 
spectacle  of  a  mind  always  in  agitation  from  the 
gloomier  passions,  I  was  yet  amused  by  the  perti- 
lacity  with  which  he   clung,  through  bad  reasons  or 


364  WILLIAM    HAZLITT, 

no  reasons,  to  any  public  slander  floating  against  men 
m  power,  or  in  the  highest  rank.  No  feather,  or  dowl 
of  a  feather,  but  was  heavy  enough  for  him.  Amongst 
other  instances  of  this  willingness  to  be  deluded  by 
rumors,  if  they  took  a  direction  favorable  to  his  own 
bias,  Hazlitt  had  adopted  the  whole  strength  of  popu- 
lar hatred  which  for  many  years  ran  violently  against 
the  King  of  Hanover,  at  that  time  Duke  of  Cumber- 
land. A  dark  calumny  had  arisen  against  this  prince, 
amongst  the  populace  of  London,  as  though  he  had 
been  accessary  to  the  death  of  his  valet.  This  valet 
[Sellis]  had,  in  fact,  attempted  to  murder  the  prince ; 
and  all  that  can  be  said  in  palliation  of  his  act,  is, 
that  he  believed  himself  to  have  sustained,  in  the 
person  of  his  beautiful  wife,  the  heaviest  dishonor 
incident  to  man.  How  that  matter  stood,  1  pretend  not 
to  know :  the  attempt  at  murder  was  baffled ;  and 
the  valet  then  destroyed  himself  with  a  razor.  All 
this  had  been  regularly  sifted  by  a  coroner's  inquest ; 
»nd  I  remarked  to  Hazlitt,  that  the  witnesses  seemed 
^o  have  been  called,  indifferently,  from  all  quarters 
r.kely  to  have  known  the  facts  ;  so  that,  if  this  inquest 
had  failed  to  elicit  the  truth,  we  might,  with  equal 
reason,  presume  as  much  of  all  other  inquests.  From 
the  verdict  of  a  jury,  except  in  very  peculiar  cases, 
no  candid  and  temperate  man  will  allow  himself  to 
believe  any  appeal  sustainable  ;  for,  having  the  wit 
nesses  before  them  face  to  face,  and  hearing  the  whoit 
af  the  evidence,  a  jury  have  always  some  means  of 
forming  a  judgment  which  cannot  be  open  to  him  whc 
depends  upon  an  abridged  report.  But,  on  this  s\il» 
iect,  Hazlitt  would  hear  no  reason.     He  said  — "  No 


WILLIAM    HAZLITT.  365 

ill  the  princely  houses  of  Europe  have  the  instinct 
of  murder  running  in  their  blood;  —  they  cherish  it 
through  their  privilege  of  making  war,  which  being 
wholesale  murder,  once  having  reconciled  themselves 
to  that,  they  think  of  retail  murder,  committed  on 
you  or  me,  as  of  no  crime  at  all."  Under  this  obsti- 
nate prejudice  against  the  duke,  Hazlitt  read  every- 
thing that  he  did,  or  did  not  do,  in  a  perverse  spirit. 
And,  in  one  of  these  nightly  walks,  he  mentioned  to 
me,  as  something  quite  worthy  of  a  murderer,  tnc 
following  little  trait  of  casuistry  in  the  royal  duke's 
distribution  of  courtesies.  "  I  saw  it  myself,"  said 
Hazlitt,  "  so  no  coroner's  jury  can  put  me  down."  His 
royal  highness  had  rooms  in  St.  James' ;  and,  one 
day,  as  he  was  issuing  from  the  palace  into  Pall-Malj, 
Hazlitt  happened  to  be  immediately  behind  him;  he 
could  therefore  watch  his  motions  along  the  whole 
line  of  his  progress.  It  is  the  custom  in  England, 
wheresoever  the  persons  of  the  royal  family  are  fa- 
iiiliar  to  the  public  eye,  as  at  Windsor,  &c.,  that  all 
passengers  in  the  streets,  on  seeing  them,  walk  bare- 
headed, or  make  some  signal  of  dutiful  respect.  On 
this  occasion,  all  the  men,  who  met  the  prince,  took 
off  their  hats ;  the  prince  acknowledging  every  such 
obeisance  by  a  separate  bow.  Pall-Mail  being  fin- 
ished, and  its  whole  harvest  of  royal  salutations  gath- 
red  in,  next  the  duke  came  to  Cockspur  street.  But 
lere,  and  taking  a  station  close  to  the  crossing,  which 
daily  he  beautified  and  polished  with  his  broom,  stood 
a  Negro  sweep.  If  numan  at  all,  wnich  some  people 
doubted,  he  was  pretty  nearl)  as  abject  a  represent* 
4ve   of  our   human   family  divine   as   can   ever  hay^ 


366  WILLIAM    HAZLITT. 

sxisted.  Still  he  was  held  to  be  a  man  by  the  law  of 
the  land,  which  would  have  hanged  any  person,  gentle 
or  simple,  for  cutting  his  throat.  Law  (it  is  certain) 
conceived  him  to  be  a  man,  however  poor  a  one 
though  Medicine,  in  an  under-tone,  muttered,  some- 
times, a  demur  to  that  opinion.  But  here  the  sweep 
Wds,  whether  man  or  beast,  standing  humbly  in  the 
path  of  royalty ;  vanish  he  would  not ;  he  was  (as 
The  Tiines  says  of  the  Corn-League)  "  a  great  fact," 
if  rather  a  muddy  one ;  and  though,  by  his  own  con- 
fession (repeated  one  thousand  times  a  day),  both 
"  a  nigger "  and  a  sweep  [*'  Remember  poor  nigger, 
your  honor  !  "  "  remember  poor  sweep!  "],  yet  the  crea- 
ture could  take  off  his  rag  of  a  hat,  and  earn  the  bow 
of  a  prince,  as  well  as  any  white  native  of  St.  James'. 
What  was  to  be  done  ?  A  great  case  of  conscience 
was  on  the  point  of  being  raised  in  the  person  of  a 
paralytic  nigger;  nay,  possibly  a  state  question  — 
Ought   a   son   of  England,*  could  a  son  of  England 

*  "  Son  of  England  ;  "  that  is,  prince  of  the  blood  in  the  direct, 
and  not  in  the  collateral,  line.  I  mention  this  for  the  sake  of 
some  readers,  who  may  not  be  aware  that  this  beautiful  form 
nia,  80  well  known  in  France,  is  often  transferred  by  the 
French  writers  of  memoirs  to  our  English  princes,  though  little 
used  amongst  ourselves.  Gaston,  Duke  of  Orleans,  brother  of 
Louis  XIV.,  was  "a  son  of  France,"  as  being  a  child  of  Louia 
Xin.  But  the  son  of  Gaston,  namely,  the  Regent  Duke  of 
Orleans,  was  a  grandson  of  France.  The  first  wife  of  Gaston, 
our  Princess  Henrietta,  was  called  "  Fille  d'Angleterre,"  as 
lieing  a  daughter  of  Charles  I.  The  Princess  Charlotte,  again, 
irar  a  daughter  of  England  ;  her  present  majesty,  a  grand' 
daughter  of  England.  But  all  those  ladies  collectively  would  tf 
•ailed,  on  the  French  principle,  the  children  of  England. 


,  WILLUM    HAZLITT.  3(J7 

lescend  from  his  majestic  pedestal  to  gild  with  the 
rays  of  his  condescension  such  a  grub,  juch  a  very 
doubtful  grub,  as  this  ?  Total  Pall-Mali  was  sagacious 
of  the  coming  crisis ;  judgment  was  gomg  to  be  deliv- 
ered ;  a  precedent  to  be  raised ;  and  Pali-Mall  stood 
still,  with  Hazlitt  at  its  head,  to  learn  the  issue.  How 
if  the  black  should  be  a  Jacobin,  and  (in  the  event  of 
the  duke's  bowing)  should  have  a  bas-relief  sculptured 
on  his  tomb,  exhibiting  an  English  prince,  and  a  Ger- 
man kins',  as  two  separate  personages,  in  the  act  of 
worshipping  his  broom  ?  Luckily,  it  was  not  the 
black's  province  to  settle  the  case.  The  Duke  of 
Cumberland,  seeing  no  counsel  at  hand  to  argue  either 
the  pro  or  the  contra^  found  himself  obliged  to  settle 
the  question  de  pla7io ;  so,  drawing  out  his  purse,  he 
kept  his  hat  as  rigidly  settled  on  his  head  as  William 
Penn  and  Mead  did  before  the  Recorder  of  London. 
All  Pall-Mall  applauded :  contradicente  Gulielmo  Haz- 
litt, and  Hazlitt  only.  The  black  swore  that  the 
prince  gave  him  half-a-crown ;  but  whether  he  re- 
garded this  in  the  light  of  a  god-send  to  his  avarice 
or  a  shipwreck  to  his  ambition  —  whether  he  was  more 
thankful  for  the  money  gained,  or  angry  for  the  honor 
[ost--did  not  tianspire.  "No  matter,"  said  Hazlitt, 
'  the  black  might  be  a  fool ;  but  1  insist  upon  it,  that 
he  was  entitled  to  the  bow,  since  all  Pall-Mall  had  it 
before  him ;  and  that  it  was  unprincely  to  refuse  it." 
Either  as  a  black  or  as  a  scavenger,  Hazlitt  held  hira 
"  qualified  "  for  sustaining  a  royal  bow  :  as  a  black, 
was  he  not  a  specimen  (if  rather  a  damaged  one)  of 
the  homo  sapiens  described  by  Linnaeus  ?  As  a  sweep, 
n   possession  (by  whatever  title <  of  a  lucrative  cross- 


368  WILLUM    IIAZLITT. 

ing,  had  he  not  a  kind  of  estate  in  London  ?  Was  he 
not,  said  Hazhtt,  a  fellow-subject,  capable  of  coni- 
tuitting  treason,  and  paying  taxes  into  the  treasury  ? 
Not  perhaps  in  any  direct  shape,  but  indirect  taxes 
most  certainly  on  his  tobacco  —  and  even  on  his 
broom. 

These  things  could  not  be  denied.  But  still,  when 
my  turn  came  for  speaking,  I  confessed  frankly  that 
(politics  apart)  my  feeling  in  the  case  went  along  with 
the  duke's.  The  bow  would  not  be  so  useful  to  the 
black  as  the  half-crown :  he  could  not  possibly  have 
both ;  for  how  could  any  man  make  a  bow  to  a  beggar 
when  in  the  act  of  giving  him  half-a-crown  ?  Then, 
on  the  other  hand,  this  bow,  so  useless  to  the  sweep, 
and  (to  speak  by  a  vulgar  adage)  as  superfluous  as  a 
side-pocket  to  a  cow,  would  react  upon  the  other  bows 
distributed  along  the  line  of  Pall-Mali,  so  as  to  neutral- 
ize them  one  and  all.  No  honor  could  continue  such 
in  which  a  paralytic  negro  sweep  was  associated.  This 
distinction,  however,  occurred  to  me ;  that  if,  instead 
of  a  prince  and  a  subject,  the  royal  dispenser  of  bows 
Dad  been  a  king,  he  ought  not  to  have  excluded  the 
black  from  participation ;  because,  as  the  common 
%ther  of  his  people,  he  ought  not  to  know  of  any  dif- 
ierence  amongst  those  who  are  equally  his  children. 
And  in  illustration  of  that  opinion,  I  sketched  a  little 
Bcene  which  I  had  myself  witnessed,  and  with  g^eai 
pleasure,  upon  occasion  of  a  visit  made  to  Drur}'  Lane 
by  George  IV.  when  regent.  At  another  time  I  may 
tell  it  to  the  reader.  Hazlitt,  however,  listened  fret- 
'ully  to  me  when  praising  the  deportment  and  beautifu, 
efcstures   of  one   conservative   leader ;   though  he  haw 


WILLIAM    HAZLITT.  869 

compelled  me  to  hear  the  most  disadvantageous  com- 
ments on  another. 

As  a  lecturer,  I  do  not  know  what  Hazlitt  was,  hav- 
ing never  had  an  opportunity  of  hearing  him.  Some 
qualitiys  in  his  style  of  composition  were  calculated  to 
assist  the  purposes  of  a  lecturer,  who  must  produce  an 
effect  oftentimes  by  independent  sentences  and  para- 
graphs, who  must  glitter  and  surprise,  who  must  turn 
round  within  the  narrowest  compass,  and  cannot  rely 
upon  any  sort  of  attention  that  would  cost  an  effort. 
Mr.  Gilfillan  says,  that  "  He  proved  more  popular  tnsui 
was  expected  by  those  who  knew  his  uncompromising 
scorn  of  all  those  tricks  and  petty  artifices  which  are 
frequently  employed  to  pump  up  applause.  His  man- 
ner was  somewhat  abrupt  and  monotonous,  but  earnest 
and  energetic."  At  the  same  time,  Mr.  Gilfillan  takes 
an  occasion  to  express  some  opinions,  which  appear 
very  just,  upon  the  unfitness  (generally  speaking)  of 
men  whom  he  describes  as  "  fiercely  inspired,"  for  this 
mode  of  display.  The  truth  is,  that  all  genius  implies 
originality,  and  sometimes  uncontrollable  singularity, 
n  the  habits  of  thinking,  and  in  the  modes  of  viewing 
as  well  as  of  estimating  objects.  Whereas  a  miscella- 
neous audience  is  best  conciliated  by  that  sort  of  talent 
which  reflects  the  average  mind,  which  is  not  over 
weighted  in  any  one  direction,  is  not  tempted  into  any 
extreme,  and  is  able  to  preserve  a  steady,  rope-dancer's 
equilibrium  of  posture  upon  themes  where  a  man  of 
genius  is  most  apt  to  lose  it. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  have  a  full  and  accurate 
Ust  of  Hazlitt's  works,  including,  of  course,  his  con- 
iributions  to  journals  and  encyclopaedias.  These  last 
24 


370  WILUAM    HAZLTTT. 

as  shorter,  and  oftener  springing  from  an  imprompcu 
effort,  are  more  likely,  than  his  regular  books,  to  have 
been  written  with  a  pleasurable  enthusiasm  ;  and  the 
writer's  proportion  of  pleasure,  in  such  cases,  very 
often  becomes  the  regulating  law  for  his  reader's. 
Amongst  the  philosophical  works  of  Hazlitt,  I  do  not 
observe  that  Mr.  GilfiUan  is  aware  of  two  that  are 
likely  to  be  specially  interesting.  One  is  an  examina- 
tion of  David  Hartley,  at  least  as  to  his  law  of  associa- 
tion Thirty  years  ago,  I  looked  into  it  slightly ;  but 
my  reverence  for  Hartley  offended  me  with  its  tone ; 
and  afterwards,  hearing  that  Coleridge  challenged  for 
his  own  most  of  what  was  important  in  the  thoughts,  I 
lost  all  interest  in  the  essay.  Hazlitt,  having  heard 
Coleridge  talk  on  this  theme,  must  have  approached  it 
with  a  mind  largely  preoccupied  as  regarded  the  weak 
points  in  Hartley,  and  the  particular  tactics  for  assail- 
ing them.  But  still  the  great  talents  for  speculative 
research  which  Hazlitt  had  from  nature,  without  having 
given  to  them  the  benefit  of  much  culture  or  much 
exercise,  would  justify  our  attentive  examination  of  the 
work.  It  forms  part  of  the  volume  which  contains  the 
*  Essay  on  Human  Action ; "  which  volume,  by  the 
,vay,  Mr.  GilfiUan  supposes  to  have  won  the  special 
applause  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  then  in  Bengal. 
This,  if  accurately  stated,  is  creditable  to  Sir  James' 
generosity ;  for  in  this  particular  volume  it  is  that 
Hazlitt  makes  a  fwinted  assault,  in  sneering  terms,  and 
very  unnecessarily,  upon  Sir  James. 

The  other  little  work  unnoticed  by  Mr.  GilfiUan,  ia 
tn  exanination  (but  under  what  title  I  cannot  say)  of 
Lindley  Murray's  English  Grammar.     This  may  seem 


WILLIAit    HAZLITT.  371 

ay  its  subject,  a  trifle  ;  yet  Hazlitt  could  nardly  have 
aad  a  motive  for  such  an  eflfort  but  in  some  philosophic 
perception  of  the  ignorance  betrayed  by  many  gram- 
mars of  our  language,  and  sometimes  by  that  of 
Lindley  Murray;  which  Lindley,  by  the  way,  though 
lesident  in  England,  was  an  American.  There  is  grea* 
room  for  a  useful  display  of  philosophic  subtlety  m  an 
English  grammar,  even  though  meant  for  schools. 
Hazlitt  could  not  but  have  furnished  something  of 
value  towards  such  a  display.  And  if  (as  I  was  once 
told)  his  book  was  suppressed,  I  imagine  that  this  sup« 
pression  must  have  been  purchased  by  some  powerful 
publisher  interested  in  keeping  up  the  current  reputa- 
tion of  Murray. 

"  Strange  stories,"  says  Mr.  Gilfillan,  "  are  told  about 
his  [Hazlitt's]  latter  days,  and  his  death-bed."  I  know 
not  whether  I  properly  understand  Mr.  Gilfillan.  The 
stories  which  I  myself  have  happened  to  hear,  were 
not  so  much  "  strange,"  since  they  arose,  naturally 
enough,  out  of  pecuniary  embarrassments,  as  they 
were  afflicting  in  the  turn  they  took.  Dramatically 
viewed,  if  a  man  were  speaking  of  things  so  far  re- 
moved from  our  own  times  and  interests  as  to  excuse 
that  sort  of  language,  the  circumstances  of  Hazlitt's 
lust  hours  might  rivet  the  gaze  of  a  critic  as  fitted, 
harmoniously,  with  almost  scenic  art,  to  the  whole 
tenor  of  his  life  ;  fitted  equally  to  rouse  his  wrath,  to 
deepen  his  dejection,  and  in  the  hour  of  death  to  justJy 
his  misanthropy.  But  I  have  no  wish  to  utter  a  word 
»n  things  which  I  know  only  a^  second-hand,  and  can* 
lot  speak   upon   without   risk   of  misstating  facts  oi 


572  WILLIAM    HaZLITT. 

doing  injustice  to  persons.     I  prefer  closing  this  section 
with  the  words  of  Mr.  Gilfillan  : 

"Well  says  Bulwer,  that  of  all  the  mental  wrecks 
which  have  occurred  in  our  era,  this  was  the  most  mel- 
ancholy. Others  may  have  been  as  unhappy  in  their 
doinestic  circumstances,  and  gone  down  steeper  places 
of  dissipation  than  he ;  but  they  had  meanwhile  the 
breath  of  popularity,  if  not  of  wealth  and  station,  to 
give  tnem  a  certain  solace.'  \\  hat  had  Hazlitt  of  this 
nature  ?  Mr.  Gilfillan  answers,  —  "  Absolutely  nothing 
to  support  and  cheer  him.  With  no  hope,  no  fortune, 
no  status  in  society ;  no  certain  popularity  as  a  writer, 
no  domestic  peace,  little  sympathy  from  kindred  spirits, 
little  support  from  his  political  party,  no  moral  man- 
agement, no  definite  belief;  with  great  powers,  and 
great  passions  within,  and  with  a  host  of  powerful 
enemies  without,  it  was  his  to  enact  one  of  the  saddest 
tragedies  on  which  the  sun  ever  shone.  Such  is  a 
faithful  portraiture  of  an  extraordinary  man,  whose 
restless  intellect  and  stormy  passions  have  now,  for 
fifteen  years,  found  that  repose  in  the  grave  which  was 
denied  them  above  it."  Mr.  Gilfillan  concludes  with 
expressing  his  conviction,  in  which  I  desire  to  concur 
that  both  enemies  and  friends  will  now  join  in  admira- 
tion for  the  man ;  "  both  will  readily  concede  now,  thai 
a  subtle  thinker,  an  eloquent  writer,  a  lover  of  beauty 
and  poetry,  and  man  and  truth,  one  of  the  best  of 
critics,  and  not  the  worst  of  men,  expired  in  Williaio 
Hazlitt."     Reguiescat  in  pace ! 


A  PERIPATETIC  PHILOSOPHER. 

He  was  a  man  of  very  extraordinary  genius.  He 
has  generally  been  treated  by  those  who  have  spoken 
of  him  in  print  as  a  madman.  But  this  is  a  mistake ; 
and  must  have  been  founded  chiefly  on  the  titles  of 
his  books.  He  was  a  man  of  fervid  mind  and  of  sub- 
lime aspirations :  but  he  was  no  madman ;  or,  if  ho 
was,  then  I  say  that  it  is  so  far  desirable  to  be  a  mad- 
man. In  1798  or  1799,  when  I  must  have  been  abou 
thirteen  years  old,  Walking  Stewart  was  in  Bath  — 
where  my  family  at  that  time  resided.  He  frequented 
the  pump-room,  and  I  believe  all  public  places  — 
walking  up  and  down,  and  dispersing  his  philosophic 
opinions  to  the  right  and  the  left,  like  a  Grecian  philos- 
opher. The  first  time  I  saw  him  was  at  a  concert  in 
the  Upper  Rooms ;  he  was  pointed  out  to  me  by  one 
of  my  party  as  a  very  eccentric  man  who  had  walked 
over  the  habitable  globe.  I  remember  that  Madame 
Mara  was  at  that  moment  singing :  and  Walking 
Stewart,  who  was  a  true  lover  of  music  {as  1  after- 
wards came  to  know),  was  hanging  upon  her  notes 
ttke  a  bee  upon  a  jessamine  flower.  His  countenance 
iSds  striking,  and  expressed  the  union  of  benignity 
with  philosophic  habits  of  thought.  In  such  health 
had  his  pedestrian  exercises  preserved  him,  connected 


J74  A    PERIPAll.TlC    PHILOSOPHER. 

With  his  abstemious  mode  of  living,  that  though  he 
must  at  that  tine  have  been  considerably  above  forty, 
he  did  not  look  older  than  twenty-eight ;  at  least  the 
face  which  lemained  upon  my  recollection  for  some 
years  was  that  of  a  young  man.  Nearly  ten  years 
afterwards  I  became  acquainted  with  him.  During 
the  interval  I  had  picked  up  one  of  his  -vorks  \c 
Bristol,  —  viz. .  his  Travels  to  discover  the  Source  of 
Moral  Motion,  the  second  volume  of  which  is  entitled 
The  Apocalypse  of  Nature.  I  had  been  greatly  im- 
pressed by  the  sound  and  original  views  which  in  the 
first  volume  he  had  taken  of  the  national  characters 
throughout  Europe.  In  particular  he  was  the  first, 
and  so  far  as  I  know  the  only  writer  who  had  noticed 
the  profound  error  of  ascribing  a  phlegmatic  character 
to  the  English  nation.  '  English  phlegm '  is  the  con- 
stant expression  of  authors  when  contrasting  the  English 
with  the  French.  Now  the  truth  is,  that,  beyond  that 
of  all  other  nations,  it  has  a  substratum  of  profound 
passion :  and,  if  we  are  to  recur  to  the  old  doctrine  of 
temperaments,  the  English  character  must  be  classed 
not  under  the  phlegmatic  but  under  the  melancholic 
temperament ;  and  the  French  under  the  sanguine. 
The  character  of  a  nation  may  be  judged  of  in  this 
particular  by  examining  its  idiomatic  language.  The 
French,  in  whom  the  lower  forms  of  passion  are  con- 
Btantly  bubbling  up  from  the  shallow  and  superficial 
character  of  their  feelings,  have  appropriated  all  the 
phrases  of  passion  to  the  service  of  trivial  and  ordi- 
nary life :  and  hence  they  have  no  language  of  passion 
for  the  service  of  poetry  or  of  occasions  really  de- 
manding it :  for  it  has  been  already  enfeebled  by 
lontinual  association  with  cases  of  an  unimpassioned 


A  PKRIPATETIC  PHILOSOPHER.  375 

order.  Bui  a  charecler  of  deeper  passion  has  a  per- 
petual standard  in  itself,  by  which  as  by  an  instinct  it 
tries  all  cases,  and  rejects  the  language  of  passion  as 
disproportionate  and  ludicrous  where  it  is  not  fully 
justified.  '  Ah  Heavens  ! '  or  '  Oh  my  God  ! '  are 
exclamations  with  us  so  exclusively  reserved  for  cases 
of  profound  interest,  —  that  on  hearing  a  woman  even 
(t.  e.  a  person  of  the  sex  most  easily  excited)  utter 
Such  words,  we  look  round  expecting  to  see  her  child 
in  some  situation  of  danger.  But,  in  France,  '  Ciel !  * 
and  '  Oh  mon  Dieu  ! '  are  uttered  by  every  woman  if  a 
mouse  does  but  run  across  the  floor.  The  ignorant 
and  the  thoughtless,  however,  will  continue  to  class  the 
English  character  under  the  phlegmatic  temperament.^ 
whilst  the  philosopher  will  perceive  that  it  is  the  exact 
polar  antithesis  to  a  phlegmatic  character.  In  this 
conclusion,  though  otherwise  expressed  and  illustrated. 
Walking  Stewart's  view  of  the  English  character  will 
be  found  to  terminate :  and  his  opinion  is  especially 
valuable  —  first  and  chiefly,  because  he  was  a  philoso- 
pher ;  secondly,  because  his  acquaintance  with  man 
civilized  and  uncivilized,  under  all  national  distinctions, 
was  absolutely  unrivalled.  Meantime,  this  and  others 
of  his  opinions  were  expressed  in  language  that  if 
literally  construed  would  often  appear  insane  or  absurd. 
The  truth  is,  his  long  intercourse  ^yith  foreign  nations 
had  given  something  of  a  hybrid  tincture  to  his  diction ; 
in  some  of  his  works,  for  instance,  he  uses  the  French 
fvord  helas !  uniformly  for  the  English  alas !  and 
upparently  with  no  consciousness  of  his  mistake  He 
flad  also  this  singularity  about  him  —  that  he  was 
everlastingly  metaphysicizing  against  metaphysics.  To 
me,  who  was  buried  in  metaphvsical  reveries  from  my 


J76  A    PERIPATETIC    PHILOSOPHER. 

earliest  days,  this  was  not  likely  to  be  an  attraction ; 
any  more  than  the  vicious  structure  of  his  diction  was 
likely  to  please  my  scholarlike  taste.  All  grounds  of 
disgust,  however,  gave  way  before  my  sense  of  hia 
powerful  merits;  and,  as  I  have  said,  I  sought  his 
acquaintance.  Coming  up  to  London  from  Oxford 
about  1807  or  1808  I  made  inquiries  about  him  ;  and 
found  that  he  usually  read  the  papers  at  a  coffee-room 
m  Piccadilly :  understanding  that  he  was  poor,  it  struck 
me  that  he  might  not  wish  to  receive  visits  at  hw 
lodgings,  and  therefore  I  sought  him  at  the  coffee- 
room.  Here  I  took  the  liberty  of  introducing  myself 
to  him.  He  received  me  courteously,  and  invited  mo 
to  his  rooms  —  which  at  that  time  were  in  Sherrard- 
street,  Golden-square  —  a  street  already  memorable  to 
me.  I  was  much  struck  with  the  eloquence  of  his 
conversation ;  and  afterwards  I  found  that  Mr.  Words- 
worth, himself  the  most  eloquent  of  men  in  conversa- 
tion, had  been  equally  struck  when  he  had  met  him  at 
Paris  between  the  years  1790  and  1792,  during  the 
early  storms  of  the  French  revolution.  In  Sherrard- 
Btreet  I  visited  him  repeatedly,  and  took  notes  of  the 
conversations  I  had  with  him  on  various  subjects. 
These  I  must  have  somewhere  or  other;  and  I  wish  I 
could  introduce  them  here,  as  they  would  interest  the 
*eader.  Occasionally  in  these  conversations,  as  in  his 
books,  he  introduced  a  few  notices  of  his  private 
history :  in  particular  I  remember  his  telling  me  that 
in  the  East  Indies  he  had  been  a  prisoner  of  Hyder's  . 
that  he  had  escaped  with  some  difficulty ;  and  that,  in 
the  service  of  one  of  the  native  princes  as  secretary  oi 
mterpreter,  he  had  accumulated  a  small  fortune.  This 
nust  have  been  too  small,  I  fear,  at  that  timo  to  allow 


A    PERIPATETIC    PHILOSOPHER  37' 

aim  even  a  philosopher's  comforts:  for  some  pari  of 
It,  mvested  in  the  French  funds,  had  been  confiscalf  d. 
I  was  grieved  to  see  a  man  of  so  much  ability,  of 
gentlemanly  manners,  and  refined  habits,  and  with  the 
infirmity  of  deafness,  sufiering  under  such  obvious 
nvations ;  and  I  once  took  the  liberty,  on  a  fit  occa- 
sion presenting  itself,  of  requesting  that  he  would 
allow  me  to  send  him  some  books  which  he  had  been 
casually  regretting  that  he  did  not  possess ;  for  I  was 
at  that  time  in  the  hey-day  of  my  worldly  prosperity. 
This  offer,  however,  he  declined  with  firmness  and 
dignity,  though  not  unkindly.  And  I  now  mention  it, 
because  I  have  seen  him  charged  in  print  with  a  selfish 
regard  to  his  own  pecuniary  interest.  On  the  contrary, 
he  appeared  to  me  a  very  liberal  and  generous  man  : 
and  I  well  remember  that,  whilst  he  refused  to  accept 
of  any  thing  from  me,  he  compelled  me  to  receive  a.s 
presents  all  the  books  which  he  published  during  my 
acquaintance  with  him  :  two  of  these,  corrected  with 
his  own  hand,  viz.  the  Lyre  of  Apollo  and  the  Sopht- 
ometer^  I  have  lately  found  amongst  other  books  left  in 
London ;  and  others  he  forwarded  to  me  in  Westmore- 
and.  In  1809  I  saw  him  often  :  in  the  spring  of  that 
jexr,  I  happened  to  be  in  London ;  and  Mr.  Words- 
worth's tract  on  the  Convention  of  Cintra  being  at  that 
time  in  the  printer's  hands,  I  superintended  the  pub- 
lication of  it ;  and,  at  Mr.  Wordsworth's  request,  1 
added  a  long  note  on  Spanish  affairs  which  is  printed 
m  the  Appendix.  The  opinions  I  expressed  in  this 
Qote  on  the  Spanish  character  at  that  time  much 
talumniated,  on  the  retreat  to  Corunna  then  fresh  in 
the  public  mind,  above  all,  the  contempt  I  expressed 
t:  the  superstition  in  respecr  to  the  French  military 


378  A    PERIPATETIC    PHILOSOPHER. 

prowess  which  was  then  universal  and  al  its  height, 
and  which  gave  way  in  fact  only  to  the  campaigns  of 
1814  and  1815,  fell  in,  as  it  happened,  with  Mr. 
Stewart's  political  creed  in  those  points  where  at  thai 
time  it  met  with  most  opposition.  In  1812  it  wa3,  1 
think,  that  I  saw  him  for  the  last  time :  and  by  the 
way,  on  the  day  of  my  parting  with  him,  I  had  an 
amusing  proof  in  my  own  experience  of  that  sort  of 
ubiquity  ascribed  to  him  by  a  witty  writer  in  the 
London  Magazine :  I  met  him  and  shook  hands  with 
him  under  Somerset-house,  telling  him  that  I  should 
leave  town  that  evening  for  Westmoreland.  Thence  I 
went  by  the  very  shortest  road  (i.  e.  through  Moor- 
street,  Soho  —  for  I  am  learned  in  many  quarters  of 
London)  towards  a  point  which  necessarily  led  me 
through  Tottenham-court-road :  I  stopped  nowhere 
and  walked  fast:  yet  so  it  was  that  in  Tottenham- 
court-road  I  was  not  overtaken  by  {that  was  compre- 
prehensible),  but  overtook.  Walking  Stewart.  Cer- 
tainly, as  the  above  writer  alleges,  there  must  have 
been  three  Walking  Stewarts  in  London.  He  seemed 
no  ways  surprised  at  this  himself,  but  explained  to  me 
that  somewhere  or  other  in  the  neighborhood  of  Tot- 
tenham-court-road there  was  a  little  theatre,  at  which 
there  was  dancing  and  occasionally  good  singing,  be- 
tween which  and  a  neighboring  coffee-house  he  some- 
tin»es  divided  his  evenings.  Singing,  it  seems,  he 
could  hear  in  spite  of  his  deafness.  In  this  street  1 
look  my  final  leave  of  him ;  it  turned  out  such ;  and 
anticipating  at  the  time  that  it  would  be  so,  I  looked 
ifter  his  white  hat  at  the  moment  it  was  disappearing 
ind  exclaimel  —  'Farewell,  thou  half-crazy  and  mosf 
eloquent  man !    I  shall  never  see  thy  face  again.*     . 


A  FEHIPATETIC  PHILOSOPHER.  379 

did  noi  uufcod,  at  that  moment,  to  visit  London  again 
for  some  years:  as  it  happened,  I  was  there  for  a 
short  time  in  1814 :  and  then  I  heard,  to  my  grea 
satisfaction,  that  Walking  Stewart  had  recovered  a 
considerable  sum  (about  .£14,000  I  believe)  from  the 
East  India  Company ;  and  from  the  abstract  given  in 
the  London  Magazine  of  the  Memoir  by  his  relation,  . 
have  since  learned  that  he  applied  this  money  most. 
wisely  to  the  purchase  of  an  annuity,  and  that  he 
'persisted  in  living'  too  long  for  the  peace  of  an 
annuity  office.  So  fare  all  companies  East  and  West, 
and  all  annuity  offices,  that  stand  opposed  in  interest 
to  philosophers!  In  1814,  however,  to  my  great  re- 
gret, I  did  not  see  him  ;  for  I  was  then  taking  a  great 
deal  of  opium,  and  never  could  contrive  to  issue  to  the 
light  of  day  soon  enough  for  a  morning  call  upon  a 
philosopher  of  such  early  hours ;  and  in  the  evening  I 
concluded  that  he  would  be  generally  abroad,  from 
what  he  had  formerly  communicated  to  me  of  his  own 
habits.  It  seems,  however,  that  he  afterwards  held 
conversaziones  at  his  own  rooms ;  and  did  not  stir  out 
to  theatres  quite  so  much.  From  a  brother  of  mme. 
who  at  one  time  occupied  rooms  in  the  same  house 
with  him,  1  learned  that  in  other  respects  he  did  not 
deviate  in  his  prosperity  from  the  philosophic  tenor  of 
his  former  life.  He  abated  nothing  of  his  peripateti.; 
exercises;  and  repaired  duly  in  the  morning,  as  he 
had  done  in  former  years,  to  St.  James's  Park, — 
ivhere  he  sate  in  contemplative  ease  amongst  the 
sows,  inhaling  their  balmy  breath  and  pursuing  his 
philosophic  reveries.  He  had  also  purchased  an  organ, 
or  more  than  one,  with  which  he  solaced  his  solitude 
and  beguiled  himself  of  uneasy  thoughts  n"  he  eve» 
had  any. 


580  A    PERIPATKTIC    PHILOSOPHEK. 

The  works  of  Walking  Stewart  must  be  read  with 
some  indulgence  ;  the  titles  are  generally  too  lofty  and 
pretending  and  somewhat  extravagant;  the  conipo- 
sition  is  lax  and  unprecise,  as  I  have  before  said  ;  and 
the  doctrines  are  occasionally  very  bold,  incautiously 
stated,  and  too  hardy  and  high-toned  for  the  nervous 
effeminacy  of  many  modern  moralists.  But  Walking 
Stewart  was  a  man  who  thought  nobly  of  human 
nature :  he  wrote  therefore  at  times  in  the  spirit  and 
with  the  indignation  of  an  ancient  prophet  against  the 
oppressors  and  destroyers  of  the  time.  In  particular  I 
remember  that  in  one  or  more  of  the  pamphlets  which 
I  received  from  him  at  Greismere  he  expressed  himself 
in  such  terms  on  the  subject  of  Tyrannicide  (dis- 
tinguishing the  cases  in  which  it  was  and  was  not 
lawful)  as  seemed  to  Mr.  Wordsworth  and  myself 
every  way  worthy  of  a  philosopher ;  but,  from  the 
way  m  which  that  subject  was  treated  in  the  House  of 
(Commons,  where  it  was  at  that  time  occasionally  in- 
troduced, it  was  plain  that  his  doctrine  was  not  fitted 
for  the  luxurious  and  relaxed  morals  of  the  age.  Like 
all  men  who  think  nobly  of  human  nature,  Walking 
Stewart  thought  of  it  hopefully.  In  some  respects  his 
hopes  were  wisely  grounded ;  in  others  they  rested  too 
much  upon  certain  metaphysical  speculations  which 
are  untenable,  and  which  satisfied  himself  only  be- 
cause his  researches  in  that  track  had  been  purely 
self-originated  and  self-disciplined.  He  relied  upon 
his  own  native  strength  of  mind ;  but  in  questions, 
which  the  wisdom  and  philosophy  of  every  age  build 
.■ng  successively  upon  each  other  have  not  been  able 
to  settle,  no  mind,  however  strong,  is  entitled  to  builo 
wholly  upon  itself.     In   many  things  he  shocked  the 


A    PERIFi^TETlC    FUILOSOFHEB.  381 

religious  sense  —  especially  as  it  exists  in  un philosophic 
minila ;  he  held  a  sort  of  rude  and  unscientific  Spinos- 
ism ;  and  he  expressed  it  coarsely  and  in  the  way 
most  likely  to  give  offence.  And  indeed  there  can  be 
no  stronger  proof  of  the  utter  obscurity  in  which  his 
works  have  slumbered  than  that  they  should  all  have 
escaped  prosecution.  He  also  allowed  himself  to  look 
too  lightly  and  indulgently  on  the  afflicting  spectacle 
of  female  prostitution  as  it  exists  in  London  and  in  all 
great  cities.  This  was  the  only  point  on  which  I  was 
disposed  to  quarrel  with  him  ;  for  I  could  not  but  view 
it  as  a  greater  reproach  to  human  nature  than  the 
slave-trade  or  any  sight  of  wretchedness  that  the  sun 
looks  down  upon.  I  often  told  him  so ;  and  that  I  was 
at  a  loss  to  guess  how  a  philosopher  could  allow  him 
self  to  view  it  simply  as  part  of  the  equipage  of  civil 
life,  and  as  reasonably  making  part  of  the  establish- 
ment and  furniture  of  a  great  city  as  police-offices, 
lamp-lighting,  or  newspapers.  Waiving  however  this 
one  instance  of  something  like  compliance  with  the 
brutal  spirit  of  the  world,  on  all  other  subjects  he  was 
emi.iently  unworldly,  child-like,  simple-minded,  and 
upright.  He  would  flatter  no  man  :  even  when  ad- 
dressing  nations,  it  is  almost  laughable  to  see  how 
invariably  he  prefaces  his  counsels  with  such  plain 
truths  uttered  in  a  manner  so  offensive  as  must  have 
defeated  his  purpose  if  it  had  otherwise  any  chance 
of  being  accomplished.  For  instance,  in  addressing 
A.merica,  he  begins  thus  :  —  '  People  of  America  ! 
bince  your  separation  from  the  mother-country  your 
moral  character  has  degenerated  in  the  energy  of 
thought  and  sense ;  produced  by  the  absence  of  your 
association  and   intercourse  with  British  officers  and 


382  A    PERIPATETIC    PHlLOSOPHEh.. 

merchants :  you  have  no  moral  discernment  to  d» 
tinguish  between  the  protective  power  of  England  and 
the  destructive  power  of  France.'  And  his  letter  to 
the  Irish  nation  opens  in  this  agreeable  and  conciliatory 
manner:  —  'People  of  Ireland!  I  address  you  as  a 
true  philosopher  of  nature,  foreseeing  the  perpetual 
misery  your  irreflective  character  and  total  absence 
of  moral  discernment  are  preparing  for'  &c.  The 
second  sentence  begins  thus  — '  You  are  sacrilegiously 
arresting  the  arm  of  your  parent  kingdom  fighting  the 
cause  of  man  and  nature,  when  the  triumph  of  the 
fiend  of  French  police-terror  would  be  your  own 
instant  extirpation  — .'  And  the  letter  closes  thus :  — 
'  I  see  but  one  awful  alternative  —  that  Ireland  will  be 
a  perpetual  moral  volcano,  threatening  the  destruction 
of  the  world,  if  the  education  and  instruction  of  thought 
and  sense  shall  not  be  able  to  generate  the  faculty  of 
moral  discernment  among  a  very  numerous  class  of 
the  population,  who  detest  the  civic  calm  as  sailors  the 
natural  calm  —  and  make  civic  rights  on  which  they 
cannot  reason  a  pretext  for  feuds  which  they  delight 
m.'  As  he  spoke  freely  and  boldly  to  others,  so  he 
spoke  loftily  of  himself:  at  p.  313^,  of  'The  Harp  of 
Apollo,'  on  making  a  comparison  of  himself  with 
Socrates  (in  which  he  naturally  gives  the  preference 
to  himself)  he  styles  'The  Harp,'  &c.  'this  un- 
parallele-1  work  of  human  energy.'  At  p.  315,  he 
calls  it  '  this  stupendous  work ; '  and  lower  down  on 
the  same  page  he  says  — '  I  was  turned  out  of  school 
at  the  age  of  fifteen  for  a  dunce  or  blockhead,  because 
would  not  stuff  into  my  memory  all  the  nonsense  of 
erudhion  and  learning ;  and  if  future  ages  should  dis- 
cover the  unparalleled  energies  of  genius  in  this  work, 


A    PERIPATETIC  PHILOSOPHER  883 

«  will  prove  my  most  important  doctrine —  •  thai  the 
powers  of  the  human  mind  must  be  developed  in  the 
education  of  thought  and  sense  in  the  study  of  moral 
upinion,  not  arts  and  science.'  Again,  at  p.  225  of 
his  Sophiometer,  he  says:  —  'The  paramount  thought 
that  dwells  in  my  mind  incessantly  is  a  question  I 
put  to  myself —  whether,  in  the  event  of  my  personal 
dissolution  by  death,  I  have  communicated  all  the 
discoveries  my  unique  mind  possesses  in  the  great 
master-science  of  man  and  nature.'  In  the  next  page 
he  determines  that  he  has,  with  the  exception  of  one 
truth,  —  viz.  'the  latent  energy,  physical  and  moral, 
of  human  nature  as  existing  in  the  British  people.' 
But  here  he  was  surely  accusing  himself  without 
ground  :  for  to  my  knowledge  he  has  not  failed  in  any 
one  of  his  numerous  works  to  insist  upon  this  theme 
at  least  a  billion  of  times.  Another  instance  of  his 
magnificent  self-estimation  is  —  that  in  the  title  pages 
of  several  of  his  works  he  announces  himself  as  '  John 
Stewart,  the  only  man  of  nature  *  that  ever  appeared 
m  the  world.' 

By  this  time  I  am  afraid  the  reader  begins  to  suspect 
that  he  was  crazy :  and  certainly,  when  I  consider 
every  thing,  he  must  have  been  crazy  when  the  wind 
was  at  NNE  ;  for  who  but  Walking  Stewart  ever 
dated  his  books  by  a  computation  drawn  —  not  from 
the  creation,  not  from  the  flood,  not  from  Nabonas&ar, 
^r  ab  urbe  conditd,  not  from  the  Hegira  —  but  from 

*  In  Bath  he  was  surnamed  •  the  Child  of  Nature  ; '  —  which 
vose  from  his  contrasting  on  every  occasion  the  existing  man 
»f  our  present  experience  with  the  ideal  or  Stewartian  man  that 
laight  be  expected  to  emerge  in  some  myriads  of  ages  ;  to  which 
'*tter  man  he  gave  the  name  of  the  Child  of  Nature. 


384  A    PERIPATETIC    PHILOSOPHER. 

themselves,  from  their  own  day  of  publication,  as  cwi 
stitutmg  the  one  great  era  in  the  history  of  man  b* 
the  side  of  which  all  other  eras  were  frivolous  anc 
impertinent  ?  Thus,  in  a  work  of  his  given  to  me  in 
1812  and  probably  published  in  that  year,  I  find  him 
incidentally  recording  of  himself  that  he  was  at  thai 
time  '  arrived  at  the  age  of  sixty-three,  with  a  firm 
tate  of  health  acquired  by  temperance,  and  a  peace 
of  mind  almost  independent  of  the  vices  of  mankind  — 
because  my  knowledge  of  life  has  enabled  me  to  place 
my  happiness  beyond  the  reach  or  contact  of  other 
men's  follies  and  passions,  by  avoiding  all  family  con- 
nections, and  all  ambitious  pursuits  of  profit,  fame,  or 
power.'  On  reading  this  passage  I  was  anxious  to 
ascertain  its  date ;  but  this,  on  turning  to  the  title  page, 
I  found  thus  mysteriously  expressed  :  '  In  the  7000th 
year  of  Astronomical  History,  and  the  first  day  of 
Intellectual  Life  or  Moral  World,  from  the  era  of  this 
work.*  Another  slight  inclination  of  craziness  appeared 
in  a  notion  which  obstinately  haunted  his  mind  that  aU 
the  kings  and  rulers  of  the  earth  would  confederate  in 
every  age  against  his  works,  and  would  hunt  them  out 
for  extermination  as  keenly  as  Herod  did  the  innocents 
in  Bethlehem.  On  this  consideration,  fearing  that  they 
might  be  intercepted  by  the  long  arms  of  these  wicked 
princes  before  they  could  reach  that  remote  Stewartian 
man  or  his  precursor  to  whom  they  were  mainly  ad- 
dressed, he  recommended  to  all  those  who  might  be 
impressed  with  a  sense  of  their  importance  to  bury  a 
copy  or  copies  of  each  work  properly  secured  frono 
damp,  &c.  at  a  depth  of  seven  or  eight  feet  below  the 
surface  of  the  earth  ;  and  on  their  death-beds  to  com 
tnunicate   the  knowledge   of  this  hct  to  some  con 


A    PERIPATETIC    PHILOSOPHER.  385 

fidentiul  friends,  who  in  their  turn  were  to  send  down 
the  tradition  to  some  discreet  persons  of  the  next 
generation  ;  and  thus,  if  the  truth  was  not  to  be  dis- 
persed for  many  ages,  yet  the  knowledge  that  here 
and  there  the  truth  lay  buried  on  this  and  that  con- 
tinent, in  secret  spots  on  Mount  Caucasus  —  in  the 
sands  of  Biledulgerid  —  and  in  hiding-places  amongst 
the  forests  of  America,  and  was  to  rise  again  in  some 
distant  age  and  to  vegetate  and  fructify  for  the  univer- 
sal benefit  of  man,  —  this  knowledge  at  least  was  to 
be  whispered  down  from  generation  to  generation , 
and,  in  defiance  of  a  myriad  of  kings  crusading  against 
him,  Walking  Stewart  was  to  stretch  out  the  influence 
of  his  writings  through  a  long  series  of  XufinadoipoQoi  to 
that  child  of  nature  whom  he  saw  dimly  through  a 
vista  of  many  centuries.  If  this  were  madness,  it 
seemed  to  me  a  somewhat  sublime  madness :  and  I 
assured  him  of  my  co-operation  against  the  kings, 
promising  that  I  would  bury  '  The  Harp  of  Apollo '  in 
my  own  orchard  in  Grasmere  at  the  foot  of  Mount 
Fairfield ;  that  I  would  bury  '  The  Apocalypse  of 
Nature'  in  one  of  the  coves  of  Helvellyn,  and  several 
other  works  in  several  other  places  best  known  to 
myself.  He  accepted  my  offer  with  gratitude ;  but 
he  then  made  known  to  me  that  he  relied  on  my 
assistance  for  a  still  more  important  service  —  which 
was  this :  in  the  lapse  of  that  vast  number  of  ages 
which  would  probably  intervene  between  the  present 
period  and  the  period  a*,  which  his  works  would  have 
reached  their  destination,  he  feared  that  the  English 
anguage  might  iisulf  have  mouldered  away.  '  No  ! ' 
said,  '  that  was  not  probable  :  considering  its  exten- 
Kive  diffusion,  and  tl)at  it  was  now  transplanted  into  all 
25 


586         A  PEKIPATKTIC  PHILOSOPHER. 

^he  continents  of  our  j)lanet,  I  would  back  the  English 
language  against  any  other  on  earth.'  His  own  per- 
suasion however  was,  that  the  Latin  was  destined  to 
survive  all  other  languages ;  it  was  to  be  the  eternal 
as  well  as  the  universal  language;  and  his  desire  was 
that  I  would  translate  his  works,  or  some  part  of  them, 
into  that  language.*  This  I  promised  ;  and  I  seriously 
designed  at  some  leisure  hour  to  translate  into  Latin  a 
selection  of  passages  which  should  embody  an  abstract 
of  his  philosophy.  This  would  have  been  doing  a 
service  to  all  those  who  might  wish  to  see  a  digest  of 
his  peculiar  opinions  cleared  from  the  perplexities  of 
hi»  peculiar  diction  and  brought  into  a  narrow  compass 
from  the  great  number  of  volumes  through  which  they 
are  at  present  dispersed.  However,  like  many  another 
plan  of  mine,  it  went  unexecuted. 

On  the  whole,  if  Walking  Stewart  were  at  all  crazy, 
he  was  so  in  a  way  which  did  not  affect  his  natural 
genius  and  eloquence  —  but  rather  exalted  them.     The 

*  I  was  not  aware  until  the  moment  of  wnting  this  passage 
that  Walking  Stewart  had  publicly  made  this  request  three  yearj 
after  making  it  to  myself:  opening  the  'Harp  of  Apollo,'  I  have 
just  now  accidentally  stumbled  on  the  following  passage,  '  Thia 
stupendous  work  is  destined,  I  fear,  to  meet  a  worse  fate  thaa 
the  Aloe,  which  as  soon  as  it  blossoms  loses  its  stalk.  This  first 
olossom  of  reason  is  threatened  with  the  loss  of  both  its  etalk 
and  its  soil:  for,  if  the  revolutionary  tyrant  should  triumph,  he 
would  destroy  all  the  English  books  and  energies  of  thought.  I 
tonjure  my  readers  to  translate  this  work  into  Latin,  and  to 
oury  it  in  the  ground,  communicating  on  their  death-beds  onlj 
>ts  place  of  concealment  to  men  of  nature.' 
From  the  title  page  of  this  work,  by  the  way,  I  learn  that 
the  7000th  year  of  Astronomical  History '  is  taken  from  tht 
Chinese  tables,  and  coincides  (as  I  had  supposed)  with  th«  yMT 
iSlS  of  oar  computation. 


A    PERIPATETIC    PHILOSOPHER.  387 

old  maxim,  indeed,  that  '  Great  wits  to  madness  sure 
ore  near  allied,'  the  maxim  of  Dryden  and  the  popular 
maxim,  I  have  heard  disputed  by  Mr.  Coleridge  and 
Mr.  Wordsworth,  who  maintain  that  mad  people  are 
the  dullest  and  most  wearisome  of  all  people.  As  a 
body,  I  believe  they  are  so.  But  I  must  dissent  from 
the  authority  of  Messrs.  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  bo 
far  as  to  distinguish.  Where  madness  is  connected, 
OS  it  often  is,  with  some  miserable  derangement  of 
the  stomach,  liver,  &c.  and  attacks  the  principle  of 
pleasurable  life,  which  is  manifestly  seated  in  the 
central  organs  of  the  body  (i.  e.  in  the  stomach  and 
the  apparatus  connected  with  it),  there  it  cannot  but 
lead  to  perpetual  suffering  and  distraction  of  thought ; 
and  there  the  patient  will  be  often  tedious  and  ia- 
coherent.  People  who  have  not  suffered  from  any 
great  disturbance  in  those  organs  are  little  aware  how 
indispensable  to  the  process  of  thinking  are  the  mo- 
mentary influxes  of  pleasurable  feeling  from  the  regular 
goings  on  of  life  in  its  primary  function ;  in  fact,  until 
^he  pleasure  is  withdrawn  or  obscured,  most  people 
are  not  aware  that  they  have  any  pleasure  from  the 
due  action  of  the  great  central  machinery  of  the 
«ystem :  proceeding  in  uninterrupted  continuance,  the 
pleasure  as  much  escapes  the  consciousness  as  the  act 
of  respiration  :  a  child,  in  the  happiest  state  of  its 
existence,  does  not  know  that  it  is  happy.  And  gen- 
erally whatsoever  is  the  level  state  of  the  hourly  feeling 
b  never  put  down  by  the  unthinking  {i.  e.  by  99  out 
j)t'  100)  to  the  account  of  happiness :  it  is  never  put 
down  with  the  positive  sign,  as  equal  to  -|-  x ;  but 
wmply  as  =:  0.  And  men  first  become  aware  that  it 
DM  a  positive  quantity,  when  tkiy  have  lost  it  (».  « 


388  A  PERIPATETIC  PHILOSOPHER. 

fallen  into  —  x).  Meantime  the  genial  pleasure  from 
the  vital  processes,  though  not  represented  to  the  con- 
sciousness, is  immanent  in  every  act  —  impulse  — 
motion  —  word  —  and  thought :  and  a  philosopher  sees 
that  the  idiots  are  in  a  state  of  pleasure,  though  they 
cannot  see  at  themselves.  Now  I  say  that,  where  this 
principle  of  pleasure  is  not  attached,  madness  is  often 
little  more  than  an  enthusiasm  highly  exalted ;  the 
animal  spirits  are  exuberant  and  in  excess ;  and  the 
madman  becomes,  if  he  be  otherwise  a  man  of  ability 
and  information,  all  the  better  as  a  companion.  I  have 
met  with  several  such  madmen ;  and  1  appeal  to  my 

brilliant  friend.  Professor  W ,  who  is  not  a  man  to 

tolerate  dulness  in  any  quarter,  and  is  himself  the  ideal 
of  a  delightful  companion,  whether  he  ever  met  a  more 
amusing  person  than  that  madman  who  took  a  post- 
chaise  with  us  from to  Carlisle,  long  years  ago, 

when  he  and  I  were  hastening  with  the  speed  of  fugi- 
tive felons  to  catch  the  Edinburgh  mail.  His  fancy 
and  his  extravagance,  and  his  furious  attacks  on  Sir 
Isaac  Newton,  like  Plato's  suppers,  refreshed  us  not 
only  for  that  day  but  whenever  they  recurred  to  us ; 
and  we  were  both  grieved  when  we  heard  some  time 
afterwards  from  a  Cambridge  man  that  he  had  mRt  our 
.rlever  friend   in  a  stage   coach    under  the   care  of  a 

jrutal  keeper. Such  a  madness,  if  any,  was  the 

madness  of  Walking  Stewart :  his  health  was  perfect; 
his  spirits  as  light  and  ebullient  as  the  spirits  of  a  bird 
m  spring-time ;  and  his  mind  unagitated  by  painful 
.houghts,  and  at  peace  with  itself.  Hence,  if  he  was 
lot  an  amusing  companion,  it  was  because  the  philoso- 
phic direction  of  his  thoughts  made  him  something 
more,     Of  anecdotes  and  matters  of  fact  he  wiis  no 


A    PERIPATETIC    PHILOSOPHEH.  389 

communicative :  of  all  that  he  had  seen  in  the  vast 
compass  of  his  travels  he  never  availed  himself  in 
conversation.  I  do  not  remember  at  this  moment  that 
he  ever  once  alluded  to  his  own  travels  in  his  inter- 
course with  me  except  for  the  purpose  of  weighing 
down  by  a  statement  grounded  on  his  own  great  per* 
Bonal  experience  an  opposite  statement  of  many  hasty 
and  misjudging  travellers  which  he  thought  injurious  to 
human  nature :  the  statement  was  this,  that  in  all  his 
countless  rencontres  with  uncivilized  tribes,  he  had 
never  met  with  any  so  ferocious  and  brutal  as  to  attack 
an  unarmed  and  defenceless  man  who  was  able  to 
make  them  understand  that  he  threw  himself  upon 
their  hospitality  and  forbearance. 

On  the  whole.  Walking  Stewart  was  a  sublime 
visionary :  he  had  seen  and  suffered  much  amongst 
men ;  yet  not  too  much,  or  so  as  to  dull  the  genial  tone 
of  his  sympathy  with  the  sufferings  of  others.  His 
mind  was  a  mirror  of  the  sentient  universe.  —  The 
whole  mighty  vision  that  had  fleeted  before  his  eyes  in 
this  world,  —  the  armies  of  Hyder-Ali  and  his  son  with 
oriental  and  barbaric  pageantry,  —  the  civic  grandeur 
of  England,  the  great  deserts  of  Asia  and  America, — 
the  vast  capitals  of  Europe,  —  London  with  its  eternal 
agitations,  the  ceaseless  ebb  and  flow  of  its  '  mighty 
heart,'  —  Paris  shaken  by  the  fierce  torments  of  revo- 
lutionary convulsions,  the  silence  of  Lapland,  and  the 
solitary  forests  of  Canada,  with  the  swarming  life  of 
'<he  torrid  zone,  together  with  innumerable  recollections 
of  mdividual  joy  and  sorrow,  that  he  had  participated 
5y  sympathy  —  lay  like  a  map  beneath  him,  as  i' 
Iternally  co-present  to  his  view  ;  so  that,  in  the  con- 
«mplation  of  the  prodigious  whole,  he  had  no  leisur** 


390  A    PERIPATETIC    PHILOSOPHER. 

to  seperate  the  parts,  or  occupy  his  mind  with  details. 
Hence  came  the  monotony  which  the  frivolous  and  the 
desultory  would  have  found  in  his  conversation.  I 
however,  who  am  perhaps  the  person  best  qualified  to 
speak  of  him,  must  pronounce  him  to  have  been  a  man 
of  great  genius ;  and,  with  reference  to  his  conversation, 
of  great  eloquence.  That  these  were  not  better  known 
and  acknowledged  was  owing  to  two  disadvantages ; 
one  grounded  in  his  imperfect  education,  the  other  in 
the  peculiar  structure  of  his  mind.  The  first  was  this : 
like  the  late  Mr.  Shelley  he  had  a  fine  vague  enthusiasm 
and  lofty  aspirations  in  connection  with  human  nature 
generally  and  its  hopes ;  and  like  him  he  strove  to 
give  steadiness,  a  uniform  direction,  and  an  intelligible 
purpose  to  these  feelings,  by  fitting  to  them  a  scheme 
of  philosophical  opinions.  But  unfortunately  the  philo« 
Bophic  system  of  both  was  so  far  from  supporting  their 
own  views  and  the  cravings  of  their  own  enthusiasm, 
that,  as  in  some  points  it  was  baseless,  incoherent,  or 
unintelligible,  so  in  others  it  tended  to  moral  results, 
from  which,  if  they  had  foreseen  them,  they  would 
have  been  themselves  the  first  to  shrink  as  contra- 
dictory to  the  very  purposes  in  which  their  system  had 
originated.  Hence,  in  maintaining  their  own  system 
they  both  found  themselves  painfully  entangled  at 
times  with  tenets  pernicious  and  degrading  to  human 
nature.  These  were  the  inevitable  consequences  of 
ihe  nQurrov  xf^tvdot*  in  iheir  speculations;  but  were  natur« 
ally  charged  upon  them  by  those  who  looked  carelessly 
into  theii  books  as  opinions  which  not  only  for  the 
sako  of  consistency  they  thought  themselves  bound  to 
ftndure,  but  to  which  they  gave  the  full  weight  of  theu 
«iinclion  and  patronage  as  to  so  many  moving  princi 
•  The  tirst  or  fiiii(l:imfiU.Tl  falsehood. 


A    PKKIPATETIC    PHILOSOPHER.  391 

ales  in  their  system.  The  other  disadvantage  under 
ivhich  Walking  Stewart  labored,  was  this :  he  was  a 
man  of  genius,  but  not  a  man  of  talents ;  at  least  his 
genius  was  out  of  all  proportion  to  his  talents,  ana 
wanted  an  organ  as  it  were  for  manifesting  itself;  so 
that  his  most  original  thoughts  were  delivered  in  a 
crude  state — imperfect,  obscure,  half  developed,  and 
not  producible  to  a  popular  audience.  He  was  aware 
of  this  himself ;  and,  though  he  claims  everywhere  the 
faculty  of  profound  intuition  into  human  nature,  yet 
with  equal  candor  he  accuses  himself  of  asinine  stu- 
pidity, dulness,  and  want  of  talent.  He  weis  a  dispro- 
portioned  intellect,  and  so  far  a  monster :  and  he  must 
be  added  to  the  long  list  of  original-minded  men  who 
have  been  looked  down  upon  with  pity  and  contempt 
by  commonplace  men  of  talent,  whose  powers  of 
mind  —  though  a  thousand  times  inferior  —  were  3'et 
more  manageable,  and  ran  in  channels  more  suited  to 
.fioiamon  uses  and  common  understandings. 


PROFESSOR  WILSON. 

There  are  many  Newtons  in  England  :  yet,  for  aJ 
that  there  is  but  one  Newton  for  earth  and  the  children 
of  earth  ;  which  Newton  is  Isaac,  and  Kepler  is  his 
prophet.'^'  There  are  many  Wilsons  in  Scotland,  and 
indeed  many  out  of  Scotland  ;  yet,  for  all  that,  Mother 
Earth  and  her  children  recognize  but  one,  which  one 
sits  in  the  Edinburgh  chair  of  Moral  Philosophy.  And, 
when  that  is  said,  all  is  said ;  is  there  anything  to  say 
more  ?  Yes,  there  is  an  infinity  to  say,  but  no  need 
to  say  it ! 

"Caetera  norunt 
Et  Tagas,  et  Ganges,  forsan  et  Antipodes." 

Such  a  radiance,  which  extinguishes  all  lesser  ligots 
has  its  own  evils.  If  a  man  like  Mr.  Touchwood  of 
the  Hottle  in  "  St  Ronan's  Well  "  should  find  his  way 
to  Tim-  (or  to  Tom-)  bucktoo,  no  matter  which,  for  Tim 
and  Tom  are  very  like  each  other  (especially  Tim)  —  In 
that  case,  he  might  have  occasion  to  draw  a  bill  upon 
England.  And  such  a  bill  would  assuredly  find  its  way 
to  its  destination.  The  drawer  of  the  bill  might  prob- 
ably be  intercepted  on  his  homeward  route,  but  the 
bill  would  not.  Now,  if  this  bill  were  drawn  upon 
"  John  Wilson,"  tout  court,  not  a  post-office  in  Christen- 
dom would  scruple  to  forward  it  to  the  Professor.  The 
Professor,  in  reply,  would  indorse  upon  it  "  no  ejects." 
But  in  the  end  he  would  pay  it,  for  his  heart  would 


PROFESSOR   WILSdN.  398 

yearn  with  brotherly  admiration  towards  a  man  who 
had  thumped  his  way  to  the  very  navel  of  Africa. 

This  mention,  by  the  way,  of  Timbuctoo,  forced  upon 
D8  by  an  illustration,  suddenly  reminds  us  that  the 
Professor  himself,  in  the  stage  of  early  manhood,  was 
Belf-dedicated  to  the  adventure  of  Timbuctoo.  What 
reasons  arose  to  disturb  this  African  scheme,  it  is  stranga 
that  we  have  forgotten  or  else  that  we  have  never  heat  J. 
Possibly  Major  Houghton's  fate  may  have  recalled  Wil- 
son, in  the  midst  of  his  youthful  enthusiasm,  to  that 
natural  but  afflicting  fear  which,  "  like  the  raven  o'er 
the  infected  house,"  sweeps  at  intervals  over  the  martial 
hopes  of  most  young  soldiers,  viz.,  the  fear  —  not  of 
death  —  but  of  death  incurred  for  no  commensurate 
return,  and  with  no  rememberable  circumstances.  To 
die,  to  die  early,  that  belongs  to  the  chances  of  the 
profession  which  the  soldier  has  adopted.  But  to  die 
as  an  aide-de-camp  in  the  act  of  riding  across  a  field  of 
battle  with  some  unimportant  order  that  has  not  even 
been  delivered  —  to  feel  that  a  sacrifice  so  vast  for  the 
sufferer  will  not  stir  a  ripple  on  the  surface  of  that 
mighty  national  interest  for  which  the  sacrifice  has  been 
made  — this  it  is  which,  in  such  a  case,  makes  the  paug 
of  dying.  Wilson  had  seen  Mungo  Park ;  from  him 
he  must  have  learned  the  sort  of  razor's-edge  on  which 
.he  traveller  walks  in  the  interior  of  Africa.  The 
trackless  forest,  the  unbridged  river,  the  howling 
wilderness,  the  fierce  Mahometan  bigotry  of  the  Moor, 
the  lawlessness  of  the  Pagan  native,  the  long  succession 
of  petty  despots — looking  upon  you  with  cruel  con- 
tempt if  you  travel  as  a  poor  man,  looking  upon  you 
irith  respect,  but  as  a  godsend,  ripe  for  wrecking,  if  you 


894 


PROFESSOR   WILSON. 


travel  as  a  rich  one  —  all  these  chances  of  ruin,  with  the 
climate  superadded,  leave  too  little  of  rational  hopeful- 
ness to  such  an  enterprise  for  sustaining  those  genial 
spirits,  without  which  nothing  of  that  nature  can 
prosper.  A  certain  proportion  of  anxiety,  or  even  of 
gloomy  fear,  is  a  stimulant :  but  in  this  excess  they 
become  killing  as  the  frost  of  Labrador.  Or,  if  not, 
only  where  a  man  has  a  demon  within  him.  Such  a 
demon  had  Park.'*  And  a  far  mightier  demon  had 
Wilson,  but,  luckily  for  us  all,  a  demon  that  haunted 
the  mind  with  objects  more  thoroughly  intellectual. 

Wilson  was  born,  we  believe,  in  Paisley.  It  is  the 
Scottish  custom,  through  the  want  of  great  public 
schools  for  the  higher  branches  of  education,  that 
universities,  to  their  own  great  injury,  are  called  upon 
to  undertake  the  functions  of  schools.  It  follows  from 
this,  that  mere  schoolboys  are  in  Scotland  sent  to  col- 
lege ;  whereas,  on  our  English  system,  none  go  to  Ox- 
ford or  Cambridge  but  young  men  ranging  from  eighteen 
to  twenty.  Agreeably  to  this  Scottish  usage,  Wilson  was 
sent  at  a  boyish  age  to  the  university  of  Glasgow,  and 
for  some  years  was  placed  under  the  care  of  Professor 
Jardine.  From  Glasgow,  and,  we  believe,  in  his 
eighteenth  year,  he  was  transferred  to  Oxford.  The 
college  which  he  selected  was  Magdalen,  of  which  col- 
lege Addison  had  been  an  alumnus.  Here  he  entered  as 
a  gentleman-commoner,  and,  in  fact,  could  not  do  otheiv 
wise;  for  Magdalen  receives  no  others,  except,  indeed, 
those  who  are  on  the  foundation,  and  who  come  thither 
by  right  of  election.  The  very  existence  of  such  s 
elass  ae  gentlemen-commoners  has  been  angrily  com- 
plained of,  as  an  undue  concession  of  license,  or  privi 


PROFESSOR    WILSON. 


395 


;ege,  or  distinction  to  mere  wealth,  when  all  distinction 
should  naturally  rise  out  of  learning  or  intellectual  su- 
periority. But  the  institution  had  probably  a  lauda- 
ble and  a  wise  origin.  The  elder  sons  of  wealthy  fam- 
ilies, who  needed  no  professional  employments,  had  no 
particular  motive  for  resorting  to  the  universities  ;  and 
one  motive  they  had  against  it  —  viz.  that  the^  jaast 
thus  come  under  a  severer  code  of  discipline  than  when 
living  at  home.  In  order,  therefore,  to  conciliate  this 
class,  and  to  attract  them  into  association  with  those 
who  would  inevitably  give  them  some  tincture  of  lit- 
erary tastes  and  knowledge,  an  easier  yoke,  as  regarded 
attendance  upon  lectures  and  other  college  exercises, 
was  imposed  upon  all  who,  by  assuming  the  higher  ex- 
penditure of  gentlemen-commoners^^  professed  them- 
selves to  be  rich  enough  for  living  without  a  profession. 
The  purpose  had  been,  as  we  have  no  doubt,  to  diffuse 
the  liberalities  of  literature  throughout  the  great  body 
of  the  landed  aristocracy ;  and  for  many  generations, 
as  it  would  be  easy  to  show,  that  object  had  been  re- 
spectably accomplished  ;  for  our  old  traditional  portrait 
of  the  English  country  gentleman,  from  Fielding  down- 
wards to  this  ultra-democratic  day,  is  a  vulgar  libel  and 
a  lie  of  malice.  So  far  from  being  the  bigoted  and 
obnse  order  described  in  popular  harangues,  the  landed 
gentry  of  England  has  ever  been  the  wisest  order 
smongst  us,  and  much  ahead  of  the  commercial  body. 
From  Oxford,  on  returning  to  Scotland,  "Wilson  re- 
■oined  his  mother,  then  living  in  Queen  Street,  Edin* 
t>urgh.  He  adopted  the  law  as  his  nominal  profession 
rith  no  fixed  resolution,  perhaps,  to  practise  it  About 
1814,  we  believe,  he  was  called  to  the  bar.     In  1818 


896  PROFESSOK    WILSON. 

ho  became  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Edinbui'gh ;  and,  we  think,  it  was  in  the 
previous  year  that  "  Blackwood's  Magazine  "  was  es- 
tablished, which,  from  the  seventh  number  downwards 
(though  latterly  by  intermitting  fits),  has  continued  to 
draw  more  memorable  support  from  him  than  ever 
journal  did  from  the  pen  of  an  individual  writer.  Ho 
was  not  the  editor  of  that  journal  at  any  time.  The 
late  Mr.  Blackwood,  a  sagacious  and  energetic  man, 
was  his  own  editor;  but  Wilson  was  its  intellectual 
Atlas,  and  very  probably,  in  one  sense,  its  creator  — 
viz.  that  he  might  be  the  first  suggester  (as  undoubt- 
edly he  was  at  one  time  the  sole  executive  realizer)  of 
that  great  innovating  principle  started  by  this  journal, 
under  which  it  oscillated  pretty  equally  between  human 
life  on  the  one  hand,  and  literature  on  the  other. 

Out  of  these  magazine  articles  has  been  drawn  the 
occasion  of  a  grave  reproach  to  Professor  Wilson.  Had 
he,  it  is  said,  thrown  the  same  weight  of  energy  and 
the  same  fiery  genius  into  a  less  desultory  shape,  it  ia 
hard  to  compute  how  enormous  and  systematic  a  book 
he  might  have  written.  That  is  true  :  had  he  worked 
a  little  at  the  book  every  day  of  his  life,  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  Greek  painter — nulla  dies  sine  tinea  —  by 
this  time  the  book  would  have  towered  into  that  alti- 
tude as  to  require  long  ladders  and  scaffoldings  for 
itudying  it ;  and,  like  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield's  family 
oicture,  could  find  its  way  into  no  human  chambers 
without  pulling  down  the  sides  of  the  house.  In  the 
"oot-notes,  where  the  street  lamps  would  keep  him  in 
trder,  the  Professor  might  have  carried  on  soberly 
woogh.     But  in  the  upper  part  of  the  page,  where  he 


PROFESSOR    WILSON.  397 

wrould  feel  himself  striding  away  in  nubibus,  oh  gemmini ! 
what  larkings  there  would  have  been,  what  sprees  with 
the  Aurora  Borealis !  What  a  rise  he  would  have 
taken  out  of  us  poor  wretches  below !  The  man  in  the 
moon  would  have  been  frightened  into  apogee  by  the 
menaces  of  the  crutch.  And,  after  all,  the  book  never 
could  have  been  suffered  to  stay  at  home  ;  it  must  have 
been  exported  to  central  Asia  on  Dr.  Johnson's  prin- 
ciple, who  said  to  Miss  Knight,  ''^  a  young  English- 
woman of  very  large  dimensions,  when  she  communi- 
cated to  the  doctor  her  design  to  live  on  the  Continent, 
"  Do,  my  dear,  by  all  means  —  really  you  are  too  big 
for  an  island."  Certainly,  awful  thoughts  of  capsizing 
flit  across  the  fancy,  when  one  sees  too  vast  a  hulk 
shipped  on  board  our  tight  little  Britannic  ark.  But, 
speaking  seriously,  the  wliole  doctrine,  from  which  ex- 
hales this  charge  against  the  Professor  of  misapplied 
powers,  calls  for  revision.  Wise  was  that  old  Grecian 
who  said  —  Mcya  fiif^Xiov,  /Acya  KaKov  —  Big  book,  big 
nuisance  !  For  books  are  the  military  "  baggage "  of 
the  human  understanding  in  its  endless  march.  And 
ffh&i  is  baggage  ?  Once  in  a  hundred  times  it  ministers 
to  our  marching  necessities  ;  but  for  the  other  ninety- 
nine  times  it  embarrasses  the  agility  of  our  movement. 
And  the  Romans,  therefore,  who  are  the  oldest  and  the 
best  authorities  on  all  military  questions,  expressed  the 
apshot  of  these  conflicting  tendencies  in  the  legionary 
baggage  by  calling  it  impedimenta,  mere  hindrances. 
They  tolerated  it,  and  why  did  they  do  that  f  Because, 
in  the  case  99  -{- 1  the  baggage  might  happen  to  be 
absolutely  indispensable.  For  the  mere  possibility  of 
that  one  case,  which,  when  it  came,  would  not  be  evaded. 


598 


PROFESSOR    WILSON. 


they  endured  what  was  a  nuisance  through  all  the  other 
cases.  But  they  took  a  comic  revenge  by  deriving  the 
name  from  the  ninety-nine  cases  where  the  baggage 
was  a  nuisance,  rather  than  from  the  hundredth  where 
it  might  chance  to  be  the  salvation  of  the  army.  To 
the  author  of  every  big  book,  so  far  from  regarding  him 
as  a  benefactor,  the  torture  ought  to  be  administered 
Instantly  by  this  interrogative  dilemma:  Is  there  any- 
thing new  (which  is  not  false)  in  your  book  ?  If  he 
says  "  No"  then  you  have  a  man,  by  his  own  confession, 
ripe  for  the  gallows.  If  he  says  "  Yes"  then  you  reply : 
What  a  wretch  in  that  case  must  you  be,  that  have 
hidden  a  thing,  which  you  suppose  important  to  man- 
kind, in  that  great  wilderness  of  a  book,  where  I  and 
other  honest  men  must  spend  half  a  life  in  running 
about  to  find  it !  It  is,  beside,  the  remark  of  a  clever 
French  writer  in  our  own  days,  that  hardly  any  of  the 
cardinal  works,  upon  which  revolve  the  capital  interests 
of  man,  are  large  works.  Plato,  for  instance,  has  but 
one  of  his  many  works  large  enough  to  fill  a  small 
octavo.  Aristotle,  as  to  bulk,  is  a  mere  pamphleteer, 
if  you  except  perhaps  four  works ;  and  each  of  those 
might  easily  be  crowded  into  a  duodecimo.  Neither 
Shakspeare  nor  Milton  has  written  any  long  work. 
Newton's  "  Principia,"  indeed,  makes  a  small  quarto ; 
but  this  arises  from  its  large  type  and  its  diagrams  :  it 
might  be  printed  in  a  pocket  shape.  And,  besides  all 
this,  even  when  a  book  is  a  large  one,  we  usually  be- 
come acquainted  with  it  but  by  extracts  or  by  abstracts 
»nd  abridgments.  All  poets  of  any  length  are  read  by 
matches  and  fragments,  when  once  they  have  ascended 
wO  great  popularity ;  so  that  the  logic  of  the  reproack 


PROFESSOR   WILSON.  899 

igainst  Professor  Wilson  is  like  that  logic  which  Mr. 
Bald,  the  Scottish  engineer,  complained  of  in  the  female 
servants  of  Edinburgh.  "  They  insist,"  said  he,  "  upon 
having  large  blocks  of  coal  furnished  to  them ;  thej 
will  not  put  up  with  any  that  are  less :  and  yet  every 
morning  the  Cynic,  who  delights  in  laughing  at  female 
caprices,  may  hear  these  same  women  down  in  areas 
braying  to  pieces  the  unmanageable  blocks  and  using 
severe  labor,  for  no  purpose  on  earth  but  at  last  to 
bring  the  coal  into  that  very  state  in  which,  without 
any  labor  at  all,  they  might  have  had  it  from  our  col- 
lieries." So  of  Professor  Wilson's  works  —  they  lie 
now  in  short  and  detached  papers  —  that  is,  in  the  very 
state  fitted  for  reading  ;  and,  if  he  had  barkened  to  hig 
counsellors,  they  would  have  been  conglutinated  into 
one  vast  block,  needing  a  quarryraan's  or  a  miner's 
skill  to  make  them  tractable  for  household  use. 

In  so  hasty  a  sketch  of  Professor  Wilson,  where  it 
is  inevitable  to  dismiss  without  notice  much  that  is  in- 
teresting, there  is  yet  one  aspect  of  his  public  preten- 
eions  which,  having  been  unusually  misrepresented, 
ought  to  be  brought  under  a  stronger  light  of  examina- 
tion :  we  mean  his  relation  to  the  chair  of  Moral  Phil- 
osophy in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  It  is  some- 
times alleged,  in  disparagement  of  Professor  Wilson, 
by  comparison  with  his  two  immediate  predecessors, 
Mr.  Dugald  Stewart  and  Dr.  Thomas  Brown,  that 
ihey  did,  but  that  he  does  not,  come  Torward  with  orig- 
jnal  contributions  to  philosophy.  He  is  allowed  the 
credit  of  lecturing  splendidly ;  but  the  complaint  is, 
that  he  does  not  place  his  own  name  on  the  roll  of  in- 
lependent  philosophers.     There  is  some  opening   to 


400  PROFESSOR   WILSON. 

demurs  in  this  invidious  statement,  even  as  regards  the 
facts.  The  quality  of  Wilson's  lectures  cannot  be  estt 
mated,  except  by  those  who  have  attended  them,  as 
none  have  been  made  public.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr. 
Dugald  Stewart  and  Dr.  Thomas  Brown  are  not  the 
original  philosophers  which  the  objection  supposes 
them.  To  have  been  multiplied,  through  repeated 
editions,  is  no  argument  even  of  notoriety  or  moment- 
ary acceptation ;  for  these  editions,  both  at  home  and 
in  America,  have  been  absorbed  by  students,  on  whom 
it  was  compulsory  to  become  purchasers  of  the  books 
used  in  their  academic  studies.  At  presentj  when  it 
has  almost  ceased  to  be  any  recommendation  to  these 
writers  that  once  they  belonged  to  the  Whig  party,  and 
when  their  personal  connections  are  fast  disappearing, 
it  is  no  longer  doubtful  that  the  interest  in  their  works 
is  undermined.  Professor  Ferrier  of  St.  Andrews,  one 
of  the  subtlest  intellects  in  modern  speculation,  has 
found  himself  compelled  to  speak  with  severity  of  both ; 
and  since  then,  in  his  edition  of  Reid,  Sir  William 
Hamilton  (who  chooses  to  lay  himself  under  some  re- 
straint in  reference  to  Mr.  Stewart)  has  not  scrupled 
to  speak  with  open  disrespect  of  Dr.  Brown  ;  once  as 
regards  a  case  of  plagiarism  ;  once  upon  that  vast  um- 
brageousness  of  superfluous  wordiness  which  is  so  dis- 
tressing to  all  readers  of  his  works.  Even  the  repu- 
tation, therefore,  of  these  men  shows  signs  of  giving 
way.  But  that  is  nothing :  on  other  grounds,  and  in 
defiance  of  reputation  the  most  flouiishing,  we  have 
always  felt  that  the  first  battery  of  sound  logic  un- 
masked against  Dr.  Brown  must  be  fatal.  That  man 
•otUd  not  be  a  philosopher  who  wrote  the  preposteroui 


PROFESSOR    WILSON.  401 

paper  against  Kant  in  an  early  number  of  the  "  Edin- 
Durgh  Review."  In  reviewing  a  Prussian,  he  had  not 
even  mastered  the  German  language,  and  was  indebted 
to  a  Frenchman  for  the  monstrous  conceits  which  he 
imputed  to  the  great  founder  of  the  critical  philosophy. 
Mr.  Dugald  Stewart  is  so  much  the  less  vulnerable  as 
he  happens  to  be  the  more  eclectic ;  in  the  little  that 
is  strictly  his  own,  he  is  not  less  vulnerable.  And  it 
embitters  the  resentment  against  these  men,  that  both 
Bpoke  with  unmeasured  illiberality,  and  with  entire 
ignorance  of  philosophers  the  most  distinguished  in  the 
last  century. 

From  these  men,  at  least,  Professor  Wilson  will 
have  nothing  to  fear.  He,  which  is  a  great  blessing, 
will  have  nothing  to  recant ;  and  assuredly,  that  man 
who  has  ever  been  the  most  generous  of  literary  men, 
and  sometimes  the  most  magnanimous  and  self-conquer- 
ing in  estimating  the  merits  of -his  contemporaries,  will 
never  cause  a  blush  upon  the  faces  of  his  descendants, 
by  putting  it  in  the  power  of  an  enemy  to  upbraid  them 
with  unbecoming  language  of  scorn  applied  by  him  to 
illustrious  extenders  of  knowledge.  "  If,"  will  be  the 
language  of  those  descendants,  "  if  our  ancestor  did,  as 
R  professor,  write  nothing  more  than  splendid  abstracts 
of  philosophy  in  its  several  sections,  in  other  words  a 
history  of  philosophy,  even  that  is  something  beyond  a 
rulgar  valuation  —  a  service  to  philosophy  which  few, 
'ndeed,  have  ever  been  in  a  condition  to  attempt.  Even 
v:,  no  man  can  doubt  that  he  would  be  found  a  thou 
land  times  more  impressive  than  the  dull,  though  most 
respectable,  Brucker,  than  Tennemann,  than  Tiede- 
vianu  (not  Tediousmann),  than  Puhle,  and  f\o  forth. 
36 


402  PROFESSOR   WILSON. 

If  he  did  no  more  than  cause  to  transmigrate  into  new 
forms  old  or  neglected  opinions,  it  is  not  certain  that  in 
this  office  the  philosopher,  whom  custom  treats  as  the 
secondary  mind,  does  not  often  transcend  his  principal. 
It  is,  at  least,  beyond  a  doubt  that  Jeremy  Taylor  and 
Paul  Richter,  both  of  whom  Professor  Wilson  at  times 
recalls,  often  times,  in  reporting  an  opinion  from  an  old 
cloistered  casuist,  or  from  a  dyspeptic  schoolman  blink- 
ing upon  Aristotle  with  a  farthing  rushlight,  lighted  it 
up  with  a  triple  glory  of  haloes,  such  as  the  dull  origin- 
ator could  never  have  comprehended.  If  therefore," 
it  will  be  said,  "  Professor  Wilson  did  no  more  than 
reanimate  the  fading  and  exorcise  the  dead,  even  so  his 
station  as  a  philosopher  is  not  necessarily  a  lower  one." 

True  ;  but  upon  that  a  word  or  two.  We  have  been 
hitherto  assuming  for  facts  the  allegations  put  forward 
—  sometimes  by  the  careless,  sometimes  by  the  inter- 
ested and  malignant.  Now  let  us  look  out  for  another 
version  of  the  facts. 

Our  own  versior/  we  beg  to  introduce  by  a  short  pref- 
ace. The  British  universities  are,  but  the  German 
universities  are  not,  connected  with  the  maintenance  of 
the  national  faith.  The  reasons  of  this  difference  rest 
upon  historical  and  political  grounds.  But  the  consc' 
quences  of  this  difference  are,  that  the  British  professor 
in  any  faculty  bearing  on  theology  is  under  conscien- 
tious restraints,  which  a  little  further  on  we  will  ex- 
plain, such  as  the  German  professor  does  not  recognize 
and  is  not  by  any  public  summons  called  upon  to  reo 
(ignize. 

It  is  ordinarily  supposed,  and  no  person  has  arguea 
the  case  upon  that  footing  with  more  bitterness  or  more 


PBOFE880R    WILBOK.  iOS 

narrowness  of  view  than  Lord  Brougham,  that  Oxford, 
when  imposing  a  subscription  to  the  Thirty-nine  Arti- 
cles of  the  English  Cnurch,  means  or  wishes  to  lay  a 
restraint  upon  the  free  movement  of  the  subscriber's  in- 
tellect. But  the  true  theory  of  that  exaction  is  this  — 
that  Oxford,  aiming  at  no  such  flagrant  impossibility, 
seeks  to  bind  over  the  student,  by  obligations  of  honoi 
and  by  reverence  for  the  sanctity  of  a  promise,  to  do  — 
what  ?  Is  it  that  he  will  not  stray  in  thought  beyond 
the  limits  staked  out  by  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  ? 
That  is  a  promise  which  no  man  could  be  sure  of  keep- 
ing; a  promise,  therefore,  which  an  honest  man  would 
not  deliberately  make,  and  which,  for  the  same  reason, 
DO  honest  body  of  men  would  seek  to  exact.  Not  this, 
not  the  promise  to  believe  as  the  Church  of  England 
believes,  but  the  promise  that  he  will  not  publish  or 
manifest  his  secret  aberrations  from  this  standard,  is 
the  promise  involved  in  the  student's  subscription. 
Now,  mark  the  effects  of  this.  Oxford  has  thus  preoc- 
cupied the  mind  of  the  student  with  a  resisting  force  as 
regards  the  heaviest  temptation  to  tamper  with  danger- 
ous forms  of  opinion,  religious  or  irreligious,  during 
that  period  when  the  judgment  is  most  rash,  and  the 
examination  most  limited.  The  heaviest  temptation 
lies  through  the  vanity  connected  with  the  conscious 
eccentricity  and  hardihood  of  bold  free-thinking.  But 
this  vanity  cannot  be  gratified  in  Oxford  ;  it  is  doomed 
to  be  starved,  unless  through  a  criminal  breach  of  fidel- 
ty  to  engagements  solemnly  contracted.  That  oath, 
which,  and  which  only,  was  sacred  in  the  eyes  of  a 
chivalrous  French  king,  ^iz.  Fox  du  gentilhomme,  is 
thus  made  to  reinforce  and  rivet  the  oath  (more  bind- 


i04  PROFESSOR    WILSON. 

tDg,  as  might  seem,  but  under  the  circumstances  fitt 
less  so)  of  Foi  die  ckretien.  For  a  case  of  conscien- 
tious conviction  may  be  imagined  which  would  liberate 
the  student  from  this  latter  oath  applied  to  his  creed; 
but  no  case  can  be  imagined  which  would  liberate  him 
from  the  other  oath,  enforcing  the  obligation  to  silence. 
Oxford,  therefore,  applies  a  twofold  check  to  any  free- 
thinking  pruriencies  in  the  student's  mind  :  1st,  Sb** 
quells  them  summarily,  a  parte  post,  by  means  of  the 
guarantee  which  she  holds  from  him ;  2dly,  She 
silently  represses  the  growth  of  such  pruriencies,  a 
parte  ante,  by  exacting  bonds  against  all  available  uses 
of  such  dallyings  with  heresy  or  infidelity.  Now,  on 
the  other  hand,  in  the  German  universities  generally, 
these  restraints  on  excesses  of  free-thinking  do  not 
exist.  The  course  of  study  leads,  at  every  point,  into 
religious  questions,  or  questions  applicable  to  religion. 
All  modes  of  philosophical  speculation,  metaphysics, 
psychology,  ethics,  connect  themselves  with  religion. 
There  is  no  interdict  or  embargo  laid  upon  the  wildest 
novelties,  in  this  direction.  The  English  subsciiption 
had  been  meant  to  operate  simply  in  that  way ;  simply 
to  secure  an  armistitium,  a  suspension  of  feuds,  in  a 
place  where  such  feuds  were  disrespectful  to  the  insti- 
tutions of  the  land,  or  might  be  perilous  —  and  in  a 
stage  of  life  when  they  would  too  often  operate  as 
pledges  given  prematurely  by  young  men  to  opinions 
which  afterwards,  in  riper  intellect,  they  might  see  rea- 
son, but  not  have  the  candor  or  the  courage  to  aban- 
ion. 

It  follows,  from  this  state  of  things,  that  a  German 
professor  is  thrown  upon  his  discretion  and  his  own  ii> 


PR0FES80B   WILSON.  403 

lividual  conscience  for  the  quality  of  his  teaching.  But 
the  British  professor  is  thrown  upon  a  public  con- 
science, embodied  in  usages  adapted  to  the  institutions 
of  his  country.  In  Edinburgh,  it  is  true,  the  students 
are  not  bound  by  subscriptions  to  any  Confession  of 
Faith.  But  that  the  whole  course  of  instruction,  or  at 
least  of  that  instruction  which  emanates  from  tho 
chair  of  Moral  Philosophy,  is  understood  to  be  con- 
nected with  the  religion  of  the  land,  appears  from  this 
—  that  the  theological  students  — those  who  are  to  fill 
the  ministerial  office  in  the  churches  of  Scotland  —  can- 
not arrive  at  that  station  without  a  certificate  of  hav- 
ing attended  the  Moral  Philosophy  Lectures.  There 
is,  therefore,  a  secret  understanding  which  imposes  upon 
the  professor  a  duty  of  adapting  his  lectures  to  this  call 
upon  him.  He  is  not  left  at  liberty  to  amuse  himself 
with  scholastic  subtilties ;  and  those  who  have  done  so, 
should  be  viewed  as  deserters  of  their  duty.  He  is 
called  upon  to  give  such  a  representative  account  of 
current  philosophy  as  may  lay  open  those  amongst  its 
treasures  which  are  most  in  harmony  with  Christian 
wisdom,  and  may  arm  the  future  clergyman  against  its 
most  contagious  errors.  For  Fichte  or  for  SchelHng 
the  path  was  open  to  mere  Athenian  subtlety  upon  any 
subject  that  might  most  tax  their  own  ingenuity,  or 
that  of  their  hearers.  But  the  British  professor  of 
moral  philosophy  is  straitened  by  more  solemn  obliga- 
"iona :  — 

"  Nobis  non  licet  esse  tam  disertis. 
Qui  mnsas  colimna  aeveriores." 

Hence  it  would  be  no  just  blame,  but  the  highest 
Draf>e,  to  Professor  Wilson,  if  his  lectures  really  did 


toe  PROFESSOR   WILSOR. 

wear  the  character  imputed  to  him  —  of  being  rich  and 
eloquent  abstracts,  rather  than  scholastic  exercitations 
in  untried  paths.  We  speak  in  the  dark  as  to  the 
fifiicts ;  but  at  the  same  time  we  offer  a  new  version,  a 
new  mode  of  interpreting,  the  alleged  facts  —  suppos- 
ing them  to  have  been  accurately  stated. 

Is  that  all  ?  No  ;  there  is  another,  and  a  far  ampler 
philosophy  —  a  philosophy  of  human  nature,  like  the 
philosophy  of  Shakspeare,  and  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  and 
of  Edmund  Burke,  which  is  scattered  through  the  mis- 
cellaneous papers  of  Professor  Wilson.  Such  philos- 
ophy by  its  very  nature  is  of  a  far  higher  and  more 
aspiring  nature  than  any  which  lingers  upon  mere 
scholastic  conundrums.  It  is  a  philosophy  that  cannot 
be  presented  in  abstract  forms,  but  hides  itself  as  an 
incarnation  in  voluminous  mazes  of  eloquence  and 
poetic  feeling.  Look  for  this  amongst  the  critical  es- 
says of  Professor  Wilson,  which,  for  continual  glimpses 
and  revelations  of  hidden  truth,  are  perhaps  abso- 
lutely unmatched.  By  such  philosophy,  his  various 
courses  of  lectures  —  we  speak  on  the  authority  of 
many  of  his  highest  students  —  are  throughout  distin- 
guished ;  and  more  especially  those  numerous  disquisi- 
tions on  Man's  Moral  Being,  his  Passions,  his  Affec- 
tions, and  his  Imagination,  in  which  Professor  Wilson 
displays  his  own  genius  —  its  originality  and  power. 

With  this  brief  sketch  of  one  who  walks  in  the  van 
of  men  the  most  memorable  and  original  that  have 
»dorned  our  memorable  and  original  age,  we  conclude 
by  saying,  in  a  spirit  of  simplicity  and  fidelity  to  the 
truth,  that  from  Professor  Wilson's  papers  in  "  Black 
irood,"  but  above  all  from  his  meditative  examinationt 


PROFE880K    WILSON. 


407 


of  great  poets,  Greek  and  English,  may  be  formed  a 
florilegium  of  thoughts,  the  most  profound  and  the 
most  gorgeously  illustrated  that  exist  in  human  com- 
position. 

Of  his  poems  or  his  prose  tales,  we  have  not  spoken : 
our  space  was  limited ;  and,  as  regards  the  poems  in 
particular,  there  appeared  some  time  ago  in  this  very 
journal  ^  a  separate  critique  upon  them,  from  whom  pro- 
ceeding we  know  not,  but  executed  with  great  feeling 
and  ability. 

1  Hogg's  Instractor. 


GOETHE. 

JoHK  WoLFGANO  VON  GoETHE,  a  man  of  com- 
manding influence  in  the  literature  of  modem  Germanj 
throughout  the  latter  half  of  his  long  life,  and  possem- 
ing  two  separate  claims  upon  our  notice ;  one  in  right 
of  his  own  unquestionable  talents  ;  and  another  much 
stronger,  though  less  direct,  arising  out  of  his  position 
and  the  extravagant  partisanship  put  forward  on  his 
behalf  for  the  last  forty  years.  The  literary  body  in  all 
countries,  and  for  reasons  which  rest  upon  a  sounder 
basis  than  that  of  private  jealousies,  have  always  been 
disposed  to  a  republican  simplicity  in  all  that  regards 
the  assumption  of  rank  and  personal  pretensions. 
Valeat  quantum  valere  potest,  is  the  form  of  license  to 
every  man's  ambition,  coupled  with  its  caution.  Let 
his  influence  and  authority  be  commensurate  with  his 
attested  value ;  and  because  no  man  in  the  present  in- 
firmity of  human  speculation,  and  the  present  multi- 
formity of  human  power  can  hope  for  more  than  a  very 
limited  superiority,  there  is  an  end  at  once  to  all  abso- 
lute dictatorship.  The  dictatorship  in  any  case  could 
be  only  relative,  and  in  relation  to  a  single  department 
of  art  or  knowledge  ;  and  this  for  a  reason  stronger  e7en 
than  that  already  noticed,  viz.,  the  vast  extent  of  the 
Seld  on  which  the  intellect  is  now  summoned  to  employ 
itself.  That  objection,  as  it  applies  only  to  the  degree 
»f  the  difficulty,  might  be  met  by  a  corresponding  de» 


GOETHK.  409 

gree  of  mental  energy ;  such  a  thing  may  be  supposed, 
at  least.  But  another  difficulty  there  is  of  a  profounder 
character  which  cannot  be  so  easily  parried.  Those 
who  have  reflected  at  all  upon  the  fine  arts,  know  that 
power  of  one  kind  is  often  inconsistent,  positively  in- 
compatible with  power  of  another  kind.  For  example, 
the  dramatic  mind  is  incompatible  with  the  epic.  And 
though  we  should  consent  to  suppose  that  some  intel- 
lect might  arise  endowed  upon  a  scale  of  such  angelic 
comprehensiveness,  as  to  vibrate  equally  and  indifier- 
ently  towards  either  pole,  still  it  is  next  to  impossible, 
in  the  exercise  and  culture  of  the  two  powers,  but  some 
bias  must  arise  which  would  give  that  advantage  to  tha 
one  over  the  other  which  the  right  arm  has  over  the 
left.  But  the  supposition,  the  very  case  put,  is  base- 
less, and  countenanced  by  no  precedent.  Yet,  under 
this  previous  difficulty,  and  with  regard  to  a  literature 
convulsed,  if  any  ever  was,  by  an  almost  total  anarchy, 
it  is  a  fact  notorious  to  all  who  take  an  interest  in 
Germany  and  its  concerns,  that  Goethe  did  in  one  way 
or  other,  through  the  length  and  breadth  of  that  vast 
country,  establish  a  supremacy  of  influence  wholly 
unexampled  ;  a  supremacy  indeed  perilous  in  a  less 
honorable  man,  to  those  whom  he  might  chance  to 
hate,  and  with  regard  to  himself  thus  far  unfortunate, 
that  it  conferred  upon  every  work  proceeding  from  his 
pen  a  sort  of  papal  indulgence,  an.  immunity  from 
criticism,  or  even  from  the  appeals  of  good  sense,  such 
as  it  is  not  wholesome  that  any  man  should  enjoy.  Yet 
we  repeat  that  German  literature  was  and  is  in  a  condi- 
tion of  total  anarchy.  With  this  solitary  exception,  no 
name,  even  in  the  most  narrow  section  of  knowledge 
or  cf  power,  has  ever  been  able  irv  that  country  to 


no  QOETHB. 

-hallenge  unconditional  reverence  ;  whereas,  with  Uk 
wid  in  France,  name  the  science,  name  the  art,  and 
we  will  name  the  dominant  professor ;  a  difference 
which  partly  arises  out  of  the  fact  that  England  and 
France  are  governed  in  their  opinions  by  two  or  three 
capital  cities,  whilst  Germany  looks  for  its  leadership 
to  as  many  cities  as  there  are  residenzen  and  universi- 
ties. For  instance,  the  little  territory  with  which 
Goethe  was  connected  presented  no  less  than  two  such 
public  lights ;  Wiemar,  the  residenz  or  privileged 
abode  of  the  Grand  Duke,  and  Jena,  the  university 
founded  by  that  house.  Partly,  however,  this  differ- 
ence may  be  due  to  the  greater  restlessness,  and  to  the 
greater  energy  as  respects  mere  speculation,  of  the 
German  mind.  But  no  matter  whence  arising,  or  how 
interpreted,  the  fact  is  what  we  have  described  ;  abso- 
lute confusion,  the  '  anarch  old  '  of  Milton,  is  the  one 
deity  whose  sceptre  is  there  paramount ;  and  yet  there 
it  was,  in  that  very  realm  of  chaos,  that  Goethe  built 
his  throne.  That  he  must  have  looked  with  trepida- 
tion and  perplexity  upon  *his  wild  empire  and  its  '  dark 
foundations,'  may  be  supposed.  The  tenure  was  un- 
certain to  him  as  regarded  its  duration  ;  to  us  it  is 
equally  uncertain,  and  in  fact  mysterious,  as  regards  its 
origin.  Meantime  the  mere  fact,  contrasted  with  the 
general  tendencies  of  the  German  literary  world,  is 
Bufficient  to  justify  a  notice,  somewhat  circumstantial, 
L  f  the  man  in  whose  favor,  whether  naturally  by  force 
d1  genius,  or  by  accident  concurring  with  intrigue,  ec 
unexampled  a  result  was  effected. 

Goethe  was  born  at  noonday  on  the  28th  of  August 
1749,  in  his  father's  house  at  Frankfort-on-the-Maine 
t'he  circumstances  of  his  birth  were  thus  far  remark 


GOETHIC.  ill 

able,  that,  unless  Goethe's  vanity  deceived  him,  they 
led  to  a  happy  revolution  hitherto  retarded  by  female 
delicacy  falsely  directed.  From  some  error  of  the 
midwife  who  attended  his  mother,  the  infant  Goethe 
appeared  to  be  still-bom.  Sons  there  were  as  yet  none 
from  this  marriage  ;  everybody  was  therefore  interested 
in  the  child's  life ;  and  the  panic  which  arose  in  con- 
sequence, having  survived  its  immediate  occasion,  was 
improved  into  a  public  resolution,  (for  which  no  doubt 
society  stood  ready  at  that  moment,)  to  found  some 
course  of  public  instruction  from  this  time  forward  for 
those  who  undertook  professionally  the  critical  duties 
of  accoucheur. 

We  have  noticed  the  house  in  which  Goethe  was 
born,  as  well  as  the  city.  Both  were  remarkable,  and 
fitted  to  leave  lasting  impressions  upon  a  young  per- 
son of  sensibility.  As  to  the  city,  its  antiquity  is  not 
merely  venerable,  but  almost  mysterious  ;  towers  were 
at  that  time  to  be  found  in  the  mouldering  lines  of  its 
earliest  defences,  which  belonged  to  the  age  of  Charle- 
magne, or  one  still  earlier ;  battlements  adapted  to  a 
mode  of  warfare  anterior  even  to  that  of  feudalism  or 
romance.  The  customs,  usages,  and  local  privileges 
of  Frankfort,  and  the  rural  districts  adjacent,  were  of 
k  corresponding  character.  Festivals  were  annually 
telebrated  at  a  short  distance  from  the  walls,  which 
had  descended  from  a  dateless  antiquity.  Everything 
wrhich  met  the  eye  spoke  the  language  of  elder  ages  ; 
whilst  the  river  on  which  the  place  was  seated,  its  great 
(air,  which  still  held  the  rank  of  the  greatest  in  Chris- 
tendom, and  its  connection  with  the  throne  of  Caesai 
uid  his  inauguration,  by  gi"ing  to  Frankfort  an  inter- 
Mt  and  a  public  character  in  the  eyes  of  all  Germany, 


112  GOETHI. 

Had  the  effect  of  coantersigning,  as  it  were,  by  state 
authority,  the  importance  which  she  otherwise  chal* 
lenged  to  her  ancestral  distinctions.  Fit  house  for 
such  a  city,  and  in  due  keeping  with  the  general 
fcenery,  was  that  of  Goethe's  father.  It  had  in  fact 
been  composed  out  of  two  contiguous  houses  ;  that  ac- 
cident had  made  it  spacious  and  rambling  in  its  plan  ; 
whilst  a  further  irregularity  had  grown  out  of  the 
original  difference  in  point  of  level  between  the  corres- 
ponding stories  of  the  two  houses,  making  it  necessary 
to  connect  the  rooms  of  the  same  suite  by  short  flights 
of  steps.  Some  of  these  features  were  no  doubt  re- 
moved by  the  recast  of  the  house  under  the  name  of 
'  repairs,'  (to  evade  a  city  by-law,)  afterwards  executed 
by  his  father  ;  but  such  was  the  house  of  Goethe's 
infancy,  and  in  all  other  circumstances  of  style  and 
furnishing  equally  antique. 

The  spirit  of  society  in  Frankfort,  without  a  court,  a 
university,  or  a  learned  body  of  any  extent,  or  a  resi- 
dent nobility  in  its  neighborhood,  could  not  be  expected 
to  display  any  very  high  standard  of  polish.  Yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  as  an  independent  city,  governed  by  its 
o^vn  separate  laws  and  tribunals,  (that  privilege  of 
xutonomy  so  dearly  valued  by  ancient  Greece,)  and 
possessing  besides  a  resident  corps  of  jurisprudents  and 
of  agents  in  various  ranks  for  managing  the  interests 
of  the  German  emperor  and  other  princes,  Frankfcrt 
had  the  means  mthin  herself  of  giving  a  liberal  tone 
to  the  pursuits  of  her  superior  citizens,  and  of  co- 
operating in  no  inconsiderable  degree  ^vith  the  general 
movement  of  the  times,  political  or  intellectual.  Th« 
memoirs  of  Goethe  himself,  and  in  particular  the  pic* 
Nxre  there  given  of  his  own  family,  as  well  as  other 


OOETHB.  413 

»ntemporary  glimpses  of  German  dome»tic  society  in 
those  days,  are  sufficient  to  show  that  much  knowledge, 
much  true  cultivation  of  mind,  much  sound  refinement 
of  taste,  were  then  distributed  through  the  middle 
classes  of  German  society ;  meaning  by  that  very  in- 
determinate expression  those  classes  which  for  Frank- 
fort composed  the  aristocracy,  viz.,  all  who  had  daily 
leisure,  and  regular  funds  for  employing  it  to  advan- 
tage. It  is  not  necessary  to  add,  because  that  is  a  fact 
applicable  to  all  stages  of  society,  that  Frankfort  pre- 
sented many  and  various  specimens  of  original  talent, 
moving  upon  all  directions  of  human  speculation. 

Yet,  with  this  general  allowance  made  for  the  capa- 
cities of  the  place,  it  is  too  evident  that,  for  the  most 
part,  they  lay  inert  and  undeveloped.  In  many  respects 
Frankfort  resembled  an  English  cathedral  city,  accord- 
ing to  the  standard  of  such  places  seventy  years  ago, 
not,  that  is  to  say,  like  Carlisle  in  this  day,  where  a 
considerable  manufacture  exists,  but  like  Chester  as  it 
is  yet.  The  chapter  of  a  cathedral,  the  resident  eccle- 
siastics attached  to  the  duties  of  so  large  an  establish- 
ment, men  always  well  educated,  and  generally  having 
families,  compose  the  original  nucletis,  around  which 
Boon  gathers  all  that  part  of  the  local  gentry  who,  for 
any  purpose,  whether  of  education  for  their  children, 
\.r  otf  social  enjoyment  for  themselves,  seek  the  advan- 
tages of  a  town.  Hither  resort  all  the  timid  old  ladies 
«vho  wish  for  conversation,  or  other  forms  of  social 
imusement  .3  hither  resort  the  valetudinarians,  male  of 
female,  by  way  of  commanding  superior  medical  advice 
it  a  cost  not  absolutely  ruinous  to  themselves ;  and 
■xultitudes  besides,  with  narrow  incomes,  to  whora 
hese  quiet  retreats  are  so  many  ciu.-s  of  refuge. 


IJ4  aOETHR. 

Such,  in  one  view,  they  really  are ;  and  yet  in  an* 
other  they  have  a  vicious  constitution.  Cathedral  citiei 
in  England,  imperial  cities  without  manufactures  in 
Germany,  are  all  in  an  improgressive  condition.  The 
amount  of  superior  families  oscillates  rather  than 
changes  ;  that  is,  it  fluctuates  within  fixed  limits  ;  and, 
for  all  inferior  families,  being  composed  either  of  shop- 
keepers or  of  menial  servants,  they  are  determined  by 
the  number,  or,  which,  on  a  large  average,  is  the  same, 
by  the  pecuniary  power,  of  their  employers.  Hence 
it  arises,  that  room  is  made  for  one  man,  in  whatever 
line  of  dependence-,  only  by  the  death  of  another  ;  and 
the  constant  increments  of  the  population  are  carried 
oflF  into  other  cities.  Not  less  is  the  difference  of 
such  cities  as  regards  the  standard  of  manners.  How 
striking  is  the  soft  and  urbane  tone  of  the  lower  orders 
in  a  cathedral  city,  or  in  a  watering-place  dependent 
upon  ladies,  contrasted  with  the  bold,  often  insolent 
demeanor  of  a  self-dependent  artisan  or  mutinous 
mechanic  of  Manchester  and  Glasgow. 

Children,  however,  are  interested  in  the  state  of 
society  around  them,  chiefly  as  it  affects  their  parents. 
Those  of  Goethe  were  respectable,  and  perhaps  tolera- 
bly representative  of  the  general  condition  in  their  own 
rank.  An  English  authoress  of  great  talent,  in  her 
Characteristics  of  Goethe,  has  too  much  countenanced 
vhe  notion  that  he  owed  his  intellectual  advantages 
exclusively  to  his  mother.  Of  this  there  is  no  proof. 
His  mother  wins  more  esteem  from  the  reader  of  this 
day,  because  she  was  a  cheerful  woman  of  serene 
.emper,  brought  into  advantageous  comparison  with  a 
Husband  much  older  than  herself,  whom  circumstancet 
bad  rendered  moody,  fitful,  sometimes  capricious,  an« 


aOETHB. 


41J 


eonfessedly  obstinate  in  that  degree  which  Pope  hab 
taught  us  to  think  connected  with  inveterate  error : 

*  Stiff  in  opinion,  always  in  the  wrong,' 

unhappily  presents  an  association  too  often  actually 
occurring  in  nature,  to  leave  much  chance  for  error  in 
presuming  either  quality  from  the  other.  And,  in  fact, 
Goethe's  father  was  so  uniformly  obstinate  in  pressing 
his  own  views  upon  all  who  belonged  to  him,  whenever 
he  did  come  forward  in  an  attitude  of  activity,  that  hia 
family  had  much  reason  to  be  thankful  for  the  rarity  cf 
Buch  displays.  Fortunately  for  them,  his  indolence 
neutralized  his  obstinacy.  And  the  worst  shape  in 
which  his  troublesome  temper  showed  itself,  was  in 
what  concerned  the  religious  reading  of  the  family. 
Once  begun,  the  worst  book  as  well  as  the  best,  the 
longest  no  less  than  the  shortest,  was  to  be  steadfastly 
read  through  to  the  last  word  of  the  last  volume  ;  no 
excess  of  yawning  availed  to  obtain  a  reprieve,  not, 
adds  his  son,  though  he  were  himself  the  leader  of  the 
yawners.  As  an  illustration  he  mentions  Bowyer's 
History  of  the  Popes  ;  which  awful  series  of  records, 
the  catacombs,  as  it  were,  in  the  palace  of  history, 
were  actually  traversed  from  one  end  to  the  other  of 
the  endless  suite  by  the  unfortunate  house  of  Goethe.  ^ 
Allowing,  however,  for  the  father's  unamiableness  in 
his  one  point,  upon  all  intellectual  ground  both  parents 
veem  to  have  met  very  much  upon  a  level.  Two  illus- 
trations may  suffice,  one  of  which  occurred  during  the 
'nfancy  of  Goethe.  The  science  of  education  was  at  that 
time  making  its  first  rude  motions  towards  an  amplei 
ievelopment ;  and,  anwngst  other  reforms  then  floating 
n  the  general  mind,  was  nne  for  eradicadng  the  child' 


jll6  OOETH£. 

ish  fear  of  ghosts,  &c.  The  young  Goethes,  as  it  hap- 
peaed,  slept  not  in  separate  beds  only,  but  in  separate 
rooms ;  and  not  unfrequently  the  poor  children,  undei 
the  stinging  terrors  of  their  lonely  situation,  stole  away 
from  their  '  forms,'  to  speak  in  the  hunter's  phrase,  and 
sought  to  rejoin  each  other.  But  in  these  attempts  they 
were  liable  to  surprises  from  the  enemy  ;  papa  and 
mamma  were  both  on  the  alert,  and  often  intercepted 
the  young  deserter  by  a  cross  march  or  an  ambuscade  ; 
in  which  cases  each  had  a  separate  policy  for  enforcing 
obedience.  The  father,  upon  his  general  system  of 
'  perseverance,'  compelled  the  fugitive  back  to  his 
quarters,  and,  in  effect,  exhorted  him  to  persist  in  being 
frightened  out  of  his  wits.  To  his  wife's  gentle  heart 
that  course  appeared  cruel,  and  she  reclaimed  the  de- 
linquent by  bribes ;  the  peaches  which  her  garden 
walls  produced  being  the  fund  from  which  she  chiefly 
drew  her  supplies  for  this  branch  of  the  secret  service. 
What  were  her  -winter  bribes,  when  the  long  nights 
would  seem  to  lie  heaviest  on  the  exchequer,  is  not 
»aid.  Speaking  seriously,  no  man  of  sense  can  sup- 
oose  that  a  course  of  suS'ering  from  terrors  the  most 
iwful,  under  whatever  influence  supported,  whether 
iinder  the  naked  force  of  compulsion,  or  of  that  con- 
nected with  bribes,  could  have  any  final  efl'ect  in  miti- 
gating the  passion  of  awe,  connected,  by  our  very 
dreams,  with  the  shadowy  and  the  invisible,  or  in 
Iran  quill  izing  the  infantine  imagination. 

A  second  illustration  involves  a  great  moral  event  in 
he  history  of  Goethe,  as  it  was,  in  fact,  the  first  occa- 
sion of  his  receiving  impressions  at  war  with  his  re- 
ligious creed.  Piety  is  so  beautiful  an  ornament  of 
Ihe  youthful  mind,  doubt  or  distrust  so   unuatuial  « 


ocnxHs.  417 

p"owth  from  confiding  innocence,  that  an  infant  free- 
thinker is  heard  of  not  so  much  with  disgust  as  with 
perplexity.  A  sense  of  the  ludicrous  is  apt  to  inter- 
mingle ;  and  we  lose  our  natural  horror  ol  tne  result 
in  wonder  at  its  origin.  Yet  in  this  instance  there  is 
no  room  for  doubt  ;  the  fact  and  the  occasion  are  both 
on  record ;  there  can  be  no  question  about  the  date ; 
and,  finally,  the  accuser  is  no  other  than  the  accused. 
Goethe's  own  pen  it  is  which  proclaims,  that  already, 
in  the  early  part  of  his  seventh  year,  his  reliance  upon 
God  as  a  moral  governor  had  sufi'ered  a  violent  shock, 
was  shaken,  if  not  undermined.  On  the  1st  of  No- 
vember, 1755,  occurred  the  great  earthquake  at  Lis- 
bon. Upon  a  double  account,  this  event  occupied  the 
thoughts  of  all  Europe  for  an  unusual  term  of  time ; 
both  as  an  expression  upon  a  larger  scale  than  usual 
of  the  mysterious  physical  agency  concerned  in  earth- 
quakes, and  also  for  the  awful  human  tragedy  *  which 
attended  either  the  earthquake  itself,  or  its  immediate 
sequel  in  the  sudden  irruption  of  the  Tagus.  Sixty 
thousand  persons,  victims  to  the  dark  power  in  its  first 
or  its  second  avatar,  attested  the  Titanic  scale  upon 
which  it  worked.  Here  it  was  that  the  shallow  piety 
»f  the  Germans  found  a  stumbling-block.  Those  who 
:iave  read  any  circumstantial  history  of  the  phy-sical 

*  Of  this  no  picture  can  ever  hope  to  rival  that  hasty  one 
iketched  in  the  letter  of  the  chaplain  to  the  Lisbon  factory.  The 
olague  of  Athens  as  painted  by  Thucydides  or  Lucretius,  nay 
•ven  the  fabulous  plague  of  London  by  De  Foe,  contain  no 
icenes  or  situations  equal  in  effect  to  some  in  this  plain  historic 
Itatement.  Nay,  it  would  perhaps  be  difficult  to  produce  a  pas- 
lage  from  Ezekiel,  from  ^schylus,  or  from  Shakspeare,  which 
would  so  profoundly  startle  the  sense  of  sublimity  as  one  or  two 
of  his  incidents. 

27 


118  OOBTHX. 

ligns  which  preceded  this  earthquake,  are  aware  that 
in  England  and  Northern  Germany  many  singular 
phenomena  were  observed,  more  or  less  manifestly 
connected  with  the  same  dark  agency  which  terminated 
at  Lisbon,  and  running  before  this  final  catastrophe  at 
times  so  accurately  varying  with  the  distances,  as  to 
furnish  something  like  a  scale  for  measuring  the 
velocity  with  which  it  moved.  These  German  phe- 
nomena, circulated  rapidly  over  all  Germany  by  the 
journals  of  every  class,  had  seemed  to  give  to  the 
Germans  a  nearer  and  more  domestic  interest  in  the 
great  event,  than  belonged  to  them  merely  in  their 
universal  character  of  humanity.  It  is  also  well  known 
to  observers  of  national  characteristics,  that  amongst 
the  Germans  the  household  charities,  the  pieties  of  the 
hearth,  as  they  may  be  called,  exist,  if  not  really  in 
greater  strength,  yet  with  much  less  of  the  usual 
balances  or  restraints.  A  German  father,  for  example, 
is  like  the  grandfather  of  other  nations ;  and  thus  a 
piety,  which  in  its  own  nature  scarcely  seems  liable  to 
excess,  takes,  in  its  external  aspect,  too  often  an  air  of 
effeminate  imbecility.  These  two  considerations  are 
lecessary  to  explain  the  intensity  mth  which  this 
Lisbon  tragedy  laid  hold  of  the  German  mind,  and 
chiefly  under  the  one  single  aspect  of  its  undistingtiish- 
ing  fury.  Women,  children,  old  men  —  these,  doubt- 
less, had  been  largely  involved  in  the  perishing  sixty 
thousand ;  and  that  reflection,  it  would  seem  from 
Goethe's  account,  had  so  far  embittered  the  sympathy 
of  the  Germans  with  their  distant  Portuguese  brethren, 
jfaat,  in  the  Frankfort  discussions,  sullen  murmurs  had 
l^radually  ripened  into  bold  impeachments  of  Provk 
dence.     There  can  be  no  gloomier  form  of  infidelity 


OOKTHE.  Hi 

than  that  which  questions  the  moral  attributes  of  the 
Great  Being,  in  whose  hands  are  the  final  destinies  of 
as  all.  Such,  however,  was  the  form  of  Goethe's 
earliest  scepticism,  such  its  origin ;  caught  up  from  the 
very  echoes  which  rang  through  the  streets  of  Frank- 
fort when  the  subject  occupied  all  men's  minds.  And 
iuch,  for  anything  that  appears,  continued  to  be  it& 
form  thenceforwards  to  the  close  of  his  life,  if  specula- 
tions so  crude  could  be  said  to  have  any  form  at  all. 
Many  are  the  analogies,  some  close  ones,  between 
England  and  Germany  with  regard  to  the  circle  of 
changes  they  have  run  through,  political  or  social,  for 
a  century  back.  The  challenges  are  frequent  to  a 
comparison ;  and  sometimes  the  result  would  be  to  the 
advantage  of  Germany,  more  often  to  ours.  But  in 
religious  philosophy,  which  in  reality  is  the  true  popu- 
lar philosophy,  how  vast  is  the  superiority  on  the  side 
of  this  country.  Not  a  shopkeeper  or  mechanic,  we 
may  venture  to  say,  but  would  have  felt  this  obvious 
truth,  that  surely  the  Lisbon  earthquake  yielded  no 
fresh  lesson,  no  peculiar  moral,  beyond  what  belonged 
to  every  man's  experience  in  every  age.  A  passage  in 
the  New  Testament  about  the  fall  of  the  tower  of 
SUoam,  and  the  just  construction  of  that  event,  had 
already  anticipated  the  difficulty,  if  such  it  could  be 
thought.  Not  to  mention,  that  calamities  upon  the 
name  scale  in  the  earliest  age  of  Christianity,  the  fall 
of  the  amphitheatre  at  Fidenae,  or  the  destruction  of 
Pompeii,  had  presented  tne  same  problem  as  the  Lis- 
bon earthquake.  Nay,  it  in  presented  daily  in  the 
numblest  individual  case,  where  wrong  is  triumphant 
OTer  right,  >r  innocence  coiifounded  with  guilt  in  one 
common  disaster.     And  that  the   parents   of  Goethe 


420  OOKTHK. 

should  have  authorized  his  error,  if  only  by  theL 
silence,  argues  a  degree  of  ignorance  in  them,  ^^hich 
could  not  have  co-existed  with  much  superior  knowl- 
edge in  the  public  mind. 

Goethe,  in  his  Memoirs,  (Book  vi.,)  commends  hii 
father  for  the  zeal  with  which  he  superintended  the 
education  of  his  children.  But  apparently  it  was  ?, 
zeal  without  knowledge.  Many  things  were  taught 
imperfectly,  but  all  casually,  and  as  chance  suggested 
them.  Italian  was  studied  a  little,  because  the  elder 
Goethe  had  made  an  Italian  tour,  and  had  collected 
some  Italian  books,  and  engravings  by  Italian  masters. 
Hebrew  was  studied  a  little,  because  Goethe  the  son 
had  a  fancy  for  it,  partly  with  a  view  to  theology,  and 
partly  because  there  was  a  Jewish  quarter,  gloomy  and 
sequestrated,  in  the  city  of  Frankfort.  French  offered 
itself  no  doubt  on  many  suggestions,  but  originally  on 
occasion  of  a  French  theatre,  supported  by  the  staff  of 
the  French  army  when  quartered  in  the  same  city. 
Latin  was  gathered  in  a  random  way  from  a  daily 
sense  of  its  necessity.  English  upon  the  temptation 
of  a  stranger's  advertisement,  promising  upon  moder- 
ate terms  to  teach  that  language  in  four  weeks ;  a 
proof,  by  the  way,  that  the  system  of  bold  innovations 
in  the  art  of  tuition  had  already  commenced.  Ridiog 
and  fencing  were  also  attempted  under  masters  ap])a< 
rently  not  very  highly  qualified,  and  in  the  same 
desultory  style  of  application.  Dancing  was  taught 
to  his  family,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  by  Mr.  Goethe 
timself.  There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  not  on« 
of  all  these  accomplishments  was  possessed  by  GoethCj 
If  hen  ready  to  visit  the  university,  in  a  degree  which 
made  it  practically  of  any  use  to  him.     Drawing  ant 


OOETHE.  421 

music  were  pursued  confessedly  as  amusements ;  and  it 
would  be  difficult  to  mention  any  attainment  whatso- 
ever whictL  Goethe  had  carried  to  a  point  of  excellence 
in  the  years  which  he  spent  under  his  father's  care, 
unless  it  were  his  mastei'y  over  the  common  artifices 
of  metre  and  the  common  topics  of  rhetoric,  which  fit- 
ted him  for  writing  what  are  called  occasional  poems 
and  impromptus.  This  talent  he  possessed  in  a  re- 
markable degree,  and  at  an  early  age  ;  but  he  owed  its 
cultivation  entirely  to  himself. 

In  a  city  so  orderly  as  Frankfort,  and  in  a  station 
privileged  from  all  the  common  hardships  of  poverty, 
it  can  hardly  be  expected  that  many  incidents  should 
arise,  of  much  separate  importance  in  themselves,  to 
break  the  monotony  of  life ;  and  the  mind  of  Goethe 
was  not  contemplative  enough  to  create  a  value  for 
common  occurrences  through  any  peculiar  impressions 
which  he  had  derived  from  them.  In  the  years  1763 
and  1764,  when  he  must  have  been  from  fourteen  to 
fifteen  years  old,  Goethe  witnessed  the  inauguration 
and  coronation  of  a  king  of  the  Romans,  a  solemn 
spectacle  connected  by  prescription  with  the  city  of 
Frankfort.  He  describes  it  circumstantially,  but  with 
very  little  feeling,  in  his  Memoirs.  Probably  the  pre- 
vailing sentiment,  on  looking  back  at  least  to  this 
transitory  splendor  of  dress,  processions,  and  ceremo- 
nial forms,  was  one  of  cynical  contempt.  But  this  he 
could  not  express,  as  a  person  closely  connected  with 
X  German  court,  and  without  giving  much  and  various 
»ffence.  It  is  with  some  timidity  even  that  he  hazards 
%  criticism  upon  single  parts  of  the  costume  adopted 
oy  some  of  the  actors  in  that  gorgeous  scene.  White 
dlk  stockings,  and  punps  of  the  common  form,  he 


122  OOETHK. 

Dbjects  to  as  out  of  harmony  with  the  antique  and 
heraldic  aspects  of  the  general  costume,  and  venturet 
to  suggest  either  boots  or  sandals  as  an  improvement. 
Had  Goethe  felt  himself  at  liberty  from  all  restraints 
of  private  consideration  in  composing  these  memoirs, 
can  it  be  doubted  that  he  would  have  taken  his  retro- 
spect of  this  Frankfort  inauguration  from  a  different 
Btation ;  from  the  station  of  that  stem  revolution 
which,  within  his  own  time  and  partly  under  his  own 
eyes,  had  shattered  the  whole  imperial  system  of 
thrones,  in  whose  equipage  this  gay  pageant  made  so 
principal  a  figure,  had  humbled  Caesar  himself  to  the 
dust,  and  left  him  an  emperor  -svithout  an  empire  ? 
We  at  least,  for  our  parts,  could  not  read  without 
some  emotion  one  little  incident  of  these  gorgeous 
scenes  recorded  by  Goethe,  namely,  that  when  the 
emperor,  on  rejoining  his  wife  for  a  few  moments, 
held  up  to  her  notice  his  own  hands  and  ai-ms  arrayed 
in  the  antique  habiliments  of  Charlemagne,  Maria 
Theresa  —  she  whose  children  were  summoned  to  so 
sad  a  share  in  the  coming  changes  —  gave  way  to 
sudden  bursts  of  loud  laughter,  audible  to  the  whole 
populace  below  her.  That  laugh,  on  surveying  the 
departing  pomps  ot  Charlemagne,  must,  in  any  con- 
templative ear,  have  rung  with  a  sound  of  deep  sig- 
nificance, and  with  something  of  the  same  effect 
which  belongs  to  a  figure  of  death  introduced  by  a 
painter,  as  mixing  in  the  festal  dances  of  a  bridal  as- 
sembly. 

These  pageants  of  1763— 64  occupy  a  considerable 
Bpace  in  Goethe's  Memoirs,  and  with  some  logical 
propriety  at  least,  in  consideration  of  their  being  ex- 
clusively  attached   to    Frankfort,   and   connected   by 


OOBTHX.  423 

manifold  links  of  person  and  office  with  the  privileged 
charactei  of  the  city.  Perhaps  he  might  feel  a  sort 
of  narrow  local  patriotism  in  recalling  these  scenes  to 
public  notice  by  description,  at  a  time  when  they  had 
been  irretrievably  extinguished  as  realities.  But, 
after  making  every  allowance  for  their  local  value  to 
a  Frankfort  family,  and  for  their  memorable  splendor, 
we  may  venture  to  suppose  that  by  far  the  most  im- 
pressive remembrances  which  had  gathered  about  the 
boyhood  of  Goethe,  were  those  which  pointed  to 
Frederick  of  Prussia.  This  singular  man,  so  imbecile 
as  a  pretender  to  philosophy  and  new  lights,  so  truly 
heroic  under  misfortunes,  was  the  first  German  who 
created  a  German  interest,  and  gave  a  transient  unity 
to  the  German  name,  under  all  its  multiplied  divisions. 
Were  it  only  for  this  conquest  of  difficulties  so  pecu- 
liar, he  would  deserve  his  German  designation  of  Fred, 
the  Unique  {Fritz  der  einzige).  He  had  been  par- 
tially tried  and  known  previously ;  but  it  was  the 
Seven  Years'  War  which  made  him  the  popular  idr>l 
This  began  in  1756;  and  to  Frankfort,  in  a  verj 
peculiar  way,  fhat  war  brought  dissensions  and  heait- 
burnings  in  its  train.  The  imperial  connections  of 
*he  city  with  many  public  and  private  interests, 
pledged  it  to  the  anti-Prussian  cause.  It  happened 
also  that  the  truly  German  character  of  the  reigning 
imperial  family,  the  domestic  habits  of  the  empresp 
and  her  young  daughters,  and  other  circumstances, 
were  of  a  nature  to  endear  the  ties  of  policy ;  self- 
interest  and  affection  pointed  in  the  same  direction. 
\nd  yet  were  all  these  considerations  allowed  to  melt 
»way  before  the  brilliant  qualities  of  one  man,  and  the 
romantic  enthusiasm  kindled  by  his  victories.     Frank 


124  UOBTHK. 

fort  was  divided  within  herself;  the  young  and  the 
generous  were  all  dedicated  to  Frederick.  A  smaller 
party,  more  cautious  and  prudent,  were,  for  the  im- 
perialists. Families  were  divided  upon  this  question 
against  families,  and  often  against  themselves  ;  feuds, 
begun  in  private,  issued  often  into  public  violence  ; 
and,  according  to  Goethe's  own  illustration,  the  streets 
were  vexed  by  daily  brawls  as  hot  and  as  personal  as 
of  old  between  the  Capulets  and  Montagues. 

These  dissensions,  however,  were  pursued  with  not 
much  personal  risk  to  any  of  the  Goethes,  until  a 
French  army  passed  the  Rhine  as  allies  of  the  imperi- 
alists. One  corps  of  this  force  took  up  their  quarters 
in  Frankfort ;  and  the  Compte  Thorane,  who  held  a 
high  appointment  on  the  staff,  settled  himself  for  a 
long  period  of  time  in  the  P'acious  mansion  of  Goethe's 
father.  This  officer,  whom  his  place  made  responsible 
for  the  discipline  of  the  army  in  relation  to  the  citi- 
zens, was  naturally  by  temper  disposed  to  moderatiop 
and  forbearance.  He  was  indeed  a  favorable  specimen 
of  French  military  officers  under  the  old  system  ;  well 
bred,  not  arrogant,  well  informed,  and  a  friend  of  the 
fine  arts.  For  painting,  in  particular,  he  professed 
great  regard  and  some  knowledge.  The  Goetlies  were 
able  to  forward  bis  views  amongst  German  artiste ; 
whils!;,  on  the  other  hand,  they  were  pleased  to  have 
thus  an  opportunity  of  directing  his  patronage  towards 
some  of  their  own  needy  connections.  In  this  ex- 
shange  of  good  offices,  the  two  parties  were  foi  some 
time  able  to  maintain  a  fair  appearance  of  reciprocal 
good-will.  This  on  the  comte's  side,  if  not  particu- 
arly  warm,  was  probably  sincere ;  but  in  Goethf 
ttie  father  it  was  a  masque  for  inveterate  dislike.     A 


GOBTHJB.  425 

V 

natural  ground  of  this  existed  in  the  original  relatione 
between  them.  Under  whatever  disguise  or  pretext, 
the  Frenchman  was  in  fact  a  military  intruder.  He 
occupied  the  best  suite  of  rooms  in  the  house,  used 
the  furniture  as  his  own  ;  and,  though  upon  private 
motives  he  abstained  from  doing  all  the  injury  which 
his  situation  authorized,  (so  as  in  particular  to  have 
spread  his  fine  military  maps  upon  the  floor,  rather 
than  disfigure  the  decorated  walls  by  nails,)  still  he 
claimed  credit,  if  not  services  of  requital,  for  all  such 
instances  of  forbearance.  Here  were  grievances  enough ; 
but,  in  addition  to  those,  the  comte's  official  appoint- 
ments drew  upon  him  a  weight  of  daily  business  which 
kept  the  house  in  a  continual  uproar.  Farewell  to  the 
quiet  of  a  literary  amateur,  and  the  orderliness  of  a 
German  household.  Finally,  the  comte  was  a  French- 
man. These  were  too  many  assaults  upon  one  man's 
patience.  It  will  be  readily  understood,  therefore, 
how  it  happened,  that,  whilst  Goethe's  gentle  minded 
mother,  with  her  flock  of  children,  continued  to  be  on 
the  best  terms  with  Comte  Thorane,  the  master  of  the 
house  kept  moodily  aloof,  and  retreated  from  all  inter- 
course. 

Goethe,  in  his  own  Memoir,  enters  into  large  detailg 
upon  this  subject ;  and  from  him  we  shall  borrow  the 
denouement  of  the  tale.  A  crisis  had  for  some  time 
been  lowering  over  the  French  affairs  in  Frankfort* 
things  seemed  ripening  for  a  battle  ;  and  at  last  it 
<ame.  Flight,  siege,  bombardment,  possibly  a  storm, 
til  danced  before  the  eyes  of  the  terrified  citizens. 
Fortunately,  however,  the  battle  took  place  at  the  dis- 
Sance  of  four  or  five  miles  from  F'-ankfort.  Monsleui 
e  ('omte  was  absent,  of  course,  on  the  field  of  battle 


426  GO£THS. 

His  unwilliog  host  thought  that  on  such  an  occasion 
he  also  might  go  out  in  quality  of  spectator  ;  and  with 
this  purpose  he  connected  another,  worthy  of  a  Parson 
Adams.  It  is  his  son  who  tells  the  story,  whose  filial 
duty  was  not  proof  against  his  sense  of  the  ludicrous. 
The  old  gentleman's  hatred  of  the  French  had  by  this 
time  brought  him  over  to  his  son's  admiration  of  the 
Prussian  hero.  Not  doubting  for  an  instaut  that  vic- 
tory would  follow  that  standard,  he  resolved  on  this 
day  to  ofi"er  in  person  his  congratulations  to  the  Prus- 
sian army,  whom  he  already  viewed  as  his  liberator 
from  a  domestic  nuisance.  So  purposing,  he  made  his 
way  cautiously  to  the  suburbs  ;  from  the  suburbs,  still 
listening  at  each  advance,  he  went  forward  to  the  coun- 
try ;  totally  forgetting,  as  his  son  insists,  that,  however 
completely  beaten,  the  French  army  must  still  occupy 
some  situation  or  other  between  himself  and  his  Ger- 
man deliverer.  Coming,  however,  at  length  to  a  heath, 
he  found  some  of  those  marauders  usually  to  be  met 
with  in  the  rear  of  armies,  prowling  about,  and  at 
ntervals  amusing  themselves  with  shooting  at  a  mark. 
For  want  of  a  better,  it  seemed  not  improbable  that  a 
large  German  head  might  answer  their  purpose.  Cer- 
tain signs  admonished  him  of  this,  and  the  old  gentle- 
man crept  back  to  Frankfort.  Not  many  hours  after 
came  back  also  the  comte,  by  no  means  creeping,  how- 
ever ;  on  the  contrary,  crowing  with  all  his  might  for 
a  victory  which  he  averred  himself  to  have  won.  There 
had  in  fact  been  an  afiair,  but  on  no  very  great  scale, 
and  with  no  distinguishing  results.  Some  prisoners 
however,  he  brought,  together  with  some  wounded  • 
»nd  naturally  he  expected  all  well  disposed  persons  to 
nake  their  compliments  of  congratulations  upon  thia 


OOBTHS  427 

triumph.  Of  this  duty  poor  Mrs.  Goetho  and  tei 
rbildren  cheerfully  acquitted  themselves  that  same 
night ;  and  Monsieur  le  Comte  was  so  well  pleased 
with  the  sound  opinions  of  the  little  Goethes,  that  he 
sent  them  in  return  a  collection  of  sweetmeats  and 
fruits.  All  promised  to  go  well ;  intentions,  after  all, 
are  not  acts  ;  and  there  certainly  is  not,  nor  ever  was, 
any  treason  in  taking  a  morning's  walk.  But,  as  ill 
luck  would  have  it,  just  as  Mr.  Goethe  was  passing  the 
comte's  door,  out  came  the  comte  in  person,  purely  by 
accident,  as  we  are  told  ;  but  we  suspect  that  the  surly 
old  German,  either  under  his  morning  hopes  or  his 
evening  disappointments,  had  talked  with  more  frank- 
ness than  prudence.  '  Good  evening  to  you,  Herr 
Goethe,'  said  the  comte  ;  '  you  are  come,  I  see,  to  pay 
your  tribute  of  congratulation.  Somewhat  of  the  latest, 
to  be  sure  ;  but  no  matter.'  '  By  no  means,'  replied 
the  German  :  '  by  no  means  ;  mit  nichten.  Heartily  I 
wished,  the  whole  day  long,  that  you  and  your  cursed 
gang  might  all  go  to  the  devil  together.'  Here  was 
plain  speaking,  at  least.  The  Comte  Thorane  could 
no  longer  complain  of  dissimulation.  His  first  move- 
ment was  to  order  an  arrest ;  and  the  official  inter- 
preter of  the  French  army  took  to  himself  the  whole 
credit  that  he  did  not  carry  it  into  effect.  Goethe 
takes  the  trouble  to  report  a  dialogue,  of  length  and 
dulness  absolutely  incredible,  between  this  interpreter 
«nd  the  comte.  No  such  dialogue,  we  may  be  assured, 
eve^  took  place.  Goethe  may,  however,  be  right  in 
supposing  that,  amongst  a  foreign  soldiery,  irritated 
by  the  pointed  contrasts  between  the  Frankfort  treat- 
ment of  their  own  wounded,  and  of  their  prisoners, 
irho  happened  to  be  in  tba  pume  circumstances,  an«? 


428  OOETHK. 

under  a  military  council  not  held  to  any  rigorous  le- 
iponsibility,  his  father  might  have  found  no  \erj 
favorable  consideration  of  his  case.  It  is  well,  there- 
fore,  that  after  some  struggle  the  corate's  better  nature 
triumphed.  He  suffered  Mrs.  Goethe's  merits  to  out- 
weigh her  husband's  delinquency  ;  countermanded  the 
order  for  arrest,  and,  during  the  remainder  of  their 
connection,  kept  at  such  a  distance  from  his  moody  host 
as  was  equally  desirable  for  both.  Fortunately  that 
remainder  was  not  very  long.  Comte  Thorane  was 
soon  displaced  ;  and  the  whole  army  was  soon  after- 
wards withdrawn  from  Frankfort. 

In  his  fifteenth  year  Goethe  was  entangled  in  some 
connection  with  young  people  of  inferior  rank,  amongst 
whom  was  Margaret,  a  young  girl  about  two  years 
older  than  himself,  and  the  object  of  his  first  love 
The  whole  affair,  as  told  by  Goethe,  is  somewhat  mys- 
terious. What  might  be  the  final  views  of  the  elder 
parties  it  is  difficult  to  say  ;  but  Goethe  assures  us  that 
they  used  his  services  only  in  writing  an  occasional 
epithalamium,  the  pecuniary  acknowledgment  for  which 
was  spent  jovially  in  a  general  banquet.  The  magis- 
trates, however,  interfered,  and  endeavored  to  extort  a 
confession  from  Goethe.  He,  as  the  son  of  a  respect- 
able family,  was  to  be  pardoned ;  the  others  to  be 
punished.  No  confession,  however,  could  be  extorted; 
and  for  his  own  part  he  declares  that,  beyond  the 
offence  of  forming  a  clandestine  connection,  he  had 
nothing  to  confess.  The  affair  terminated,  as  regarded 
himself,  in  a  severe  illness.  Of  the  others  we  heai 
no  more. 

The  next  event  of  importance  in  Goethe's  life  wai 
lis  removal  to  college.     His  own  wishes  pointed  to 


GOETRX.  429 

Gottingen,  but  his  father  preferred  Leipsic.  Thithei 
accordingly  he  went,  but  he  carried  his  obedience  no 
farther.  Declining  the  study  of  jurisprudence,  he 
attached  himself  to  general  literature.  Subsequently 
he  removed  to  the  university  of  Strasburg  ;  but  in 
neither  place  could  it  be  said  that  he  pursued  any 
regular  course  of  study.  His  health  suffered  at  times 
during  this  period  of  his  life  ;  at  first,  from  an  afiection 
of  the  chest,  caused  by  an  accident  on  his  first  journey 
to  Leipsic ;  the  carriage  had  stuck  fast  in  the  muddy 
roads,  and  Goethe  exerted  himself  too  much  in  as- 
sisting to  extricate  the  wheels.  A  second  illness  con- 
nected with  the  digestive  organs  brought  him  into 
considerable  ^nger. 

After  his  return  to  Frankfort,  Goethe  commenced 
his  career  as  an  author.  In  1773,  and  the  following 
year,  he  made  his  maiden  essay  in  Goetz  of  Berlich- 
ingen,  a  drama,  (the  translation  of  which,  remarkably 
enough,  was  destined  to  be  the  literary  coup  d'essai 
of  Sir  Walter  Scott,)  and  in  the  far-famed  Werther. 
The  first  of  these  was  pirated  ;  and  in  consequence  the 
author  found  some  difficulty  in  paying  for  the  paper  of 
the  genuine  edition,  which  part  of  the  expense,  by  hia 
contract  with  the  publisher,  fell  upon  himself.  The 
general  and  early  popularity  of  the  second  work  is  well 
known.  Yet,  except  in  so  far  as  it  might  spread  his 
name  abroad,  it  cannot  be  supposed  to  have  had  much 
influence  in  attracting  that  potent  patronage  which  now 
began  to  determine  the  course  of  his  future  life.  So 
much  we  collect  from  the  account  which  Goethe  him- 
«elf  has  left  us  of  this  affair  in  its  earliest  stages. 

*  1  was  sitting  alone  in  my  room,'  says  he,  '  at  my 
Ather's  house  in  Frankfort,  when  a  gentleman  nntereo. 


430  OOETHB. 

whoca  at  first  I  took  for  Frederick  Jacubi,  but  soon 
discovered  by  the  dubious  light  to  be  a  stranger.  He 
had  a  military  air ;  and  announcing  himself  by  the 
name  of  Von  Knebel,  gave  me  to  understand  in  a  short 
explanation,  that  being  in  the  Prussian  service,  he  had 
connected  himself,  during  a  long  residence  at  Berlin 
and  Potsdam,  with  the  literati  of  those  places  ;  but  that 
at  present  he  held  the  appointment  from  the  court  of 
Weimar  of  travelling  tutor  to  the  Prince  Constantine. 
This  I  heard  with  pleasure ;  for  many  of  our  friends 
had  brought  us  the  most  interesting  accounts  from 
Weimar,  in  particular  that  the  Duchess  Amelia,  mother 
of  the  young  grand  duke  and  his  brother,  summoned 
to  her  assistance  in  educating  her  sons  the  most  dis- 
tinguished men  in  Germany  ;  and  that  the  university 
of  Jena  cooperated  powerfully  in  all  her  liberal  plans. 
I  was  aware  also  that  Wieland  was  in  high  favor  ;  and 
that  the  German  Mercury  (a  literary  journal  of  emi- 
nence) was  itself  highly  creditable  to  the  city  of  Jena, 
from  which  it  issued.  A  beautiful  and  well-conducted 
theatre  had  besides,  as  I  knew,  been  lately  established 
at  Weimar.  This,  it  was  true,  had  been  destroyed  ; 
but  that  event,  under  common  circumstances  so  likely 
to  be  fatal  as  respected  the  present,  had  served  only  to 
call  forth  the  general  expression  of  confidence  in  the 
young  prince  as  a  restorer  and  upholder  of  all  great 
interests,  and  true  to  his  purposes  under  any  calamity.' 
Thinking  thus,  and  thus  prepossessed  in  favor  of  Wei- 
mar, it  was  natural  that  Goethe  should  be  eager  to  sea 
the  prince.  Nothing  was  easier.  It  happened  that  he 
»nd  his  brother  Constantine  were  at  this  moment  in 
Frankfort,  and  Von  Knebel  willingly  offered  to  present 
3oethe.     No  sooner  said  than  done  ;  they  repaired  te 


eOETHE.  431 

liie  hotel,  where  they  found  the  illustrious  travellers, 
with  Count  Goertz,  the  tutor  of  the  elder. 

Upon  this  occasion  an  accident,  rather  than  any 
previous  reputation  of  Goethe,  was  probably  the  deter- 
mining occasion  which  led  to  his  favor  with  the  future 
sovereign  of  Weimar.  A  new  book  lay  upon  the  table ; 
that  none  of  the  strangers  had  read  it,  Goethe  inferred 
from  observing  that  the  leaves  were  as  yet  uncut.  It 
was  a  work  of  Moser,  {Patriolische  Phantasien ;)  and, 
being  political  rather  than  literary  in  its  topics,  it  pre- 
sented to  Goethe,  previously  acquainted  with  its  outline, 
an  opportunity  for  conversing  with  the  prince  upon 
subjects  nearest  to  his  heart,  and  of  showing  that  he 
was  not  himself  a  mere  studious  recluse.  The  oppor- 
tunity was  not  lost ;  the  prince  and  his  tutor  were  much 
interested,  and  perhaps  a  little  surprised.  Such  sub- 
jects have  the  further  advantage,  according  to  Goethe's 
own  illustration,  that,  like  the  Arabian  thousand  and 
one  nights,  as  conducted  by  Sultana  Scheherezade, 
'  never  ending,  still  beginning,'  they  rarely  come  to 
any  absolute  close,  but  so  interweave  one  into  another, 
as  still  to  leave  behind  a  large  arrear  of  interest.  In 
order  to  pursue  the  conversation,  Goethe  was  invited  to 
meet  them  soon  after  at  Mentz.  He  kept  the  appoint- 
ment punctually  ;  made  himself  even  more  agreeable  ; 
and  finally  received  a  formal  invitation  to  enter  the  ser- 
vice of  this  excellent  prince,  who  was  now  beginning 
to  collect  around  him  all  those  persons  who  have  since 
made  Weimar  so  distinguisned  a  name  in  connection 
with  the  German  literature.  With  some  opposition 
from  his  father,  who  held  up  the  rupture  between  Vol- 
taire and  Frederick  of  Prussia  as  a  precedent  applying 
to   aL'    :?o88ible   connections    of  princes  and   literati. 


432  GOETHE. 

Goethe  accepted  the  invitation ;  and  henceforwards^ 
for  upwards  of  fifty-five  years,  his  fortunes  were  bound 
up  with  the  ducal  house  of  Weimar. 

The  noble  part  which  that  house  played  in  the  great 
modern  drama  of  German  politics  is  well  known,  and 
would  have   been   better  known   had  its  power  been 
greater.     But  the  moral  value  of  its  sacrifices  and  its 
risk  is  not  the  less.      Had   greater  potentates  shown 
equal  firmness,  Germany  would  not  have  been  laid  at 
the  feet  of  Napoleon.     In  1806,  the  Grand  Duke  wag 
aware  of  the  peril  which  awaited  the  allies  of  Prussia  ; 
but  neither  his  heart  nor  his  conscience  would  allow  of 
his  deserting  a  friend  in  whose  army  he  held  a  principal 
command.     The  decisive  battle  took  place  in  his  own 
territory,  and  not  far  from  his  own  palace  and  city  of 
Weimar.     Personally  he  was  with  the  Prussian  army  ; 
but  his  excellent  consort  stayed  in  the  palace  to  encour- 
age her  subjects,  and  as  far  as  possible  to  conciliate  the 
enemy  by  her   presence.     The   fortune  of  that  great 
day,  the  14th  of  October,  1806,  was   decided   early; 
and  the  awful  event  was  announced  by  a  hot  retreat 
and   a  murderous  pursuit  through   the  streets  of  the 
town.     In  the  evening  Napoleon  arrived  in  person ;  and 
now  came  the  trying  moment.     '  The  duchess,'  says  an 
Englishman  well  acquainted  with  Weimar  and  its  court, 
'  placed  herself  on  the  top  of  the  staircase  to  greet  him 
with  the  formality  of  a  courtly  reception.     Napoleon 
started  when    he  beheld  her :    Qui  etes  vous  ?  he  ex- 
claimed  with    characteristic   abruptness.      Je   suit   la 
Duchesse   de    Weimar.      Je  vous  plains,    he   retorted 
fiercely,  J'ecraserai   voire  mari;    he    then   added,   '  I 
•hall  dine  in  my  apartment,'  and  rushed  by  her.     The 
oight  was  spent  on  the  part  of  the  soldiery  in  all  th« 


OOETHE.  433 

horrid  excesses  of  rapine.  In  the  morning  the  duchess 
sent  to  inquire  concerning  the  health  of  his  majesty  the 
emperor,  and  to  solicit  an  audience.  He,  who  had  now 
henefited  by  his  dreams,  or  by  his  reflections,  returned 
B  gracious  answer,  and  invited  himself  to  breakfast  with 
hei  in  her  apartment.*  In  the  conversation  which  en- 
sued. Napoleon  asked  her  if  her  husband  were  mad  ; 
upon  which  she  justified  the  duke  by  appealing  to  his 
own  magnanimity,  asking  in  her  turn  if  his  majesty 
would  have  approved  of  his  deserting  the  king  of  Prus- 
sia at  the  moment  when  he  was  attacked  by  so  potent 
a  monarch  as  himself.  The  rest  of  the  conversation 
was  in  the  same  spirit,  uniting  with  a  sufficient  conces- 
sion to  the  circumstances  of  the  moment  a  dignified 
vindication  of  a  high-minded  policy.  Napoleon  was 
deeply  impressed  with  respect  for  her,  and  loudly  ex- 
pressed it.  For  her  sake,  indeed,  he  even  aflfected  to 
pardon  her  husband,  thus  making  a  merit  with  her  of 
the  necessity  which  he  felt,  from  other  motives,  for 
showing  forbearance  towards  a  family  so  nearly  allied 
to  that  of  St.  Petersburg.  In  1813  the  Grand  Duke  was 
found  at  his  post  in  that  great  gathering  of  the  nations 
which  took  place  on-  the  stupendous  fields  of  Leipsic, 
and  was  complimented  by  the  allied  sovereigns  as  one 
of  the  most  faithful  amongst  the  faithful  to  the  great 
cause,  yet  undecided,  of  national  independence. 

With  respect  to  Goethe,  as  a  councillor  so  near  the 
duke's  person,  it  may  be  supposed  that  his  presence 
was  never  wanting  where  it  promised  to  be  useful.  In 
the  earlier  campaigns  of  the  duke,  Goethe  was  his  com- 
panion ;  but  in  the  final  contest  with  Napoleon  he  was 
unequal  to  the  fatigues  of  such  a  post.  In  all  the  func- 
tions of  peace,  however,  he  continued  to  be  a  useful 
28 


484  eoBTHS. 

lervant  to  the  last,  though  long  released  from  all  official 
duties.  Each  had  indeed  most  honorably  earned  the 
gratitude  of  the  other.  Goethe  had  surrendered  the 
flower  of  his  years  and  the  best  energies  of  his  mind  to 
the  service  of  his  serene  master.  On  the  other  hand, 
that  master  had  to  him  been  at  once  his  Augustus  and 
his  Maecenas  ;  such  is  his  own  expression.  Under  him 
he  had  founded  a  family,  raised  an  estate,  obtained 
*itles  and  decorations  from  various  courts ;  and  in  the 
very  vigor  of  his  life  he  had  been  allowed  to  retire, 
with  all  the  honors  of  long  service,  to  the  sanctuary  of 
his  own  study,  and  to  the  cultivation  of  his  leisure,  as 
the  very  highest  mode  in  which  he  could  further  the 
public  interest. 

The  life  of  Goethe  was  so  quiet  and  so  uniform  after 
the  year  1775,  when  he  may  first  be  said  to  have  en- 
tered into  active  life,  by  taking  service  with  the  Duke 
of  Weimar,  that  a  biographer  will  find  hardly  any  event 
to  notice,  except  two  journeys  to  Italy,  and  one  cam- 
paign in  1792,  until  he  draws  near  the  close  of  his  long 
career.  It  cannot  interest  an  English  reader  to  see  the 
dates  of  his  successive  appointments.  It  is  enough  to 
know  that  they  soon  raised  him  to  as  high  a  station  as 
was  consistent  with  literary  leisure ;  and  that  he  had 
from  the  beginning  enjoyed  the  unlimited  confidence  ol 
his  sovereign.  Nothing  remained,  in  fact,  for  the  sub- 
ject to  desire  which  the  prince  had  not  previously  vol- 
unteered. In  1825  they  were  able  to  look  back  upon  a 
course  of  uninterrupted  friendship,  maintained  through 
^'ood  and  evil  fortunes,  unexampled  in  their  agitation 
and  interest  for  fifty  years.  The  duke  commemorated 
this  remarKaoie  event  by  a  jubilee,  and  by  a  medal  in 
konot  ot  Ooetne.     Full  of  years  and  honor,  this  em»- 


ooiTHx.  435 

leiU  man  might  now  begin  to  think  of  his  departure, 
However,  his  serenity  continued  unbroken  nearly  foi 
two  years  more,  when  his  illustrious  patron  died.  That 
Bhock  was  the  first  which  put  his  fortitude  to  trial.  In 
1830  others  followed;  the  duchess  who  had  won  so 
much  admiration  from  Napoleon  died  ;  then  followed 
his  own  son  ;  and  there  remained  little  now  to  connect 
his  wishes  with  the  earth.  The  family  of  his  patron  he 
had  lived  to  see  flourishing  in  his  descendants  to  the 
fourth  generation.  His  own  grandchildren  were  pros- 
perous and  happy.  His  intellectual  labors  were  now 
accomplished.  All  that  remained  to  wish  for  was  a 
gentle  dismission.  This  he  found  in  the  spring  of  1 832. 
After  a  six  days'  illness,  which  caused  him  no  apparent 
Buffering,  on  the  morning  of  the  22d  of  March  he 
breathed  away  as  if  into  a  gentle  sleep,  surrounded  by 
his  daughter-in-law  and  her  children.  Never  was  a 
death  more  in  harmony  with  the  life  it  closed ;  both 
had  the  same  character  of  deep  and  absolute  serenity. 
Such  is  the  outline  of  Goethe's  life,  traced  through 
its  principal  events.  But  as  the  events,  after  all,  bor- 
row their  interest  mainly  from  the  consideration  allowed 
to  Goethe  as  an  author,  and  as  a  model  in  the  German 
literature,  —  that  being  the  centre  about  which  all  sec- 
ondary feelings  of  interest  in  the  man  must  finally 
revolve,  —  it  thus  becomes  a  duty  to  throw  a  glance 
over  his  principal  works.  Dismissing  his  songs,  to 
which  has  been  ascribed  by  some  critics  a  very  high 
value  for  their  variety  and  their  lyrical  enthusiasm; 
dismissing  also  a  large  volume  of  short  miscellaneoua 
poems  ;  suited  to  the  occasional  circumstances  in  which 
they  arose  ;  we  may  throw  the  capital  works  of  Goethe 
into  two  classes,  philosophic  novels  and  dramas.     The 


436  O0£THE. 

novels,  which  we  call  philosophic  by  way  of  expressing 
their  main  characteristic  in  being  written  to  serve  a 
preconceived  purpose,  or  to  embody  some  peculiar 
views  of  life,  or  some  aspects  of  philosophic  truth,  are 
three,  viz.,  the  Werther's  Leiden ;  secondly,  the  Wil- 
helm  Meister ;  and,  lastly,  the  Wahloer-wandschaften. 
The  first  two  exist  in  English  translations ;  and  though 
the  Werther  had  the  disadvantage  of  coming  to  us 
through  a  French  version,  already,  perhaps,  somewhat 
colored  and  distorted  to  meet  the  Parisian  standards  of 
sentiment,  yet,  as  respects  Goethe  and  his  reputation 
amongst  us,  this  wrong  has  been  redressed,  or  com- 
pensated at  least,  by  the  good  fortune  of  his  Wilhelm 
Meister,  in  falling  into  the  hands  of  a  translator  whose 
original  genius  qualified  him  for  sympathizing  even  to 
excess  with  any  real  merits  in  that  work.  This  novel 
is  in  its  own  nature  and  purpose  sufficiently  obscure; 
and  the  commentaries  which  have  been  written  upon  it 
by  the  Humboldts,  Schlegels,  &c.,  make  the  enigma 
still  more  enigmatical.  We  shall  not  venture  abroad 
apon  an  ocean  of  discussion  so  truly  dark,  and  at  the 
same  time  so  illimitable.  Whether  it  be  qualified  to 
excite  any  deep  and  sincere  feeling  of  one  kind  or 
another  in  the  German  mind,  —  in  a  mind  trained 
under  German  discipline,  —  this  we  will  consent  to 
waive  as  a  question  not  immediately  interesting  to  our- 
selves. Enough  that  it  has  not  gained,  and  will  not 
gain,  any  attention  in  this  country  ;  and  this  not  only 
because  it  is  thoroughly  deficient  in  all  points  of  at- 
traction to  readers  formed  upon  our  English  literature 
but  because  in  some  capital  circumstances  it  is  abso 
.utely  repulsive.  We  do  not  wish  to  ofiend  the  ad- 
mirera  of  Qoethe,  but  the  simplicity  of  truth  will  no. 


OOBTHX.  437 

kllow  as  to  conceal,  that  in  various  points  of  descrip" 
tion  or  illustration,  and  sometimes  in  the  very  outline 
of  the  story,  the  Wilhelm  Meister  is  at  open  war,  not 
with  decorum  and  good  taste  merely,  but  with  moral 
purity  and  the  dignity  of  human  nature.  As  a  novelist, 
Goethe  and  his  reputation  are  problems,  and  likely  to 
continue  such,  to  the  countrymen  of  Mrs.  Inchbald, 
Miss  Harriet  Lee,  Miss  Edgeworth,  and  Sir  W«dter 
Scott.  To  the  dramatic  works  of  Goethe  we  are 
disposed  to  pay  more  homage ;  but  neither  in  the 
absolute  amount  of  our  homage  at  all  professing  to 
approach  his  public  admirers,  nor  to  distribute  the 
proportions  of  this  homage  amongst  his  several  per- 
formances according  to  the  graduations  of  their  scale. 
The  Iphigenie  is  built  upon  the  old  subject  of  Iphigenia 
in  Tauris,  as  treated  by  Euripides  and  other  Grecian 
dramatists ;  and,  if  we  are  to  believe  a  Schlegel,  it  is 
in  beauty  and  effect  a  mere  echo  or  reverberation  from 
the  finest  strains  of  the  old  Grecian  music.  That  it  is 
somewhat  nearer  to  the  Greek  model  than  a  play  after 
the  fashion  of  Racine,  we  grant.  Setting  aside  such 
^thful  transcripts  from  the  antique  as  the  Samson 
Agonistes,  we  might  consent  to  view  Goethe  as  that 
one  amongst  the  moderns  who  had  made  the  closest 
approximation  to  the  Greek  stage.  Proadrmis,  we 
might  say,  with  Quintilian,  but  with  him  we  must  add, 
*  sed  longo  intervallo  ;  '  and  if  in  the  second  rank,  yet 
nearer  to  the  third  than  to  the  first.  Two  other 
iramas,  the  Clavigo  and  the  Egmont,  fall  below  the 
\phige7iie  by  the  very  character  of  their  pretensions ; 
the  first  as  too  openly  renouncing  the  grandeurs  of  the 
ideal ;  the  second  as  confessedly  violating  the  historic 
XvXti.  of  character,  without  temptation  to  do  so,  and 


438  eosTHK. 

without  any  consequent  indemnification.  The  Tasst 
has  been  supposed  to  realize  an  Italian  beauty  of  genia. 
warmth  and  of  sunny  repose ;  but  froru  the  common 
defect  of  German  criticism  —  the  absei'ce  of  all  suf- 
ficient illustrations  —  it  is  as  difficult  to  understand  the 
true  nature  and  constituents  of  the  supposed  Italian 
standard  set  up  for  the  regulation  of  our  judgments, 
as  it  is  to  measure  the  degree  of  approach  made  to  that 
standard  in  this  particular  work.  Eugenie  is  celebra- 
ted for  the  artificial  burnish  of  the  style,  but  otherwise 
has  been  little  relished.  It  has  the  beauty  of  marble 
jculpture,  say  the  critics  of  Goethe,  but  also  the  cold- 
ness. We  are  not  often  disposed  to  quarrel  with  these 
critics  as  below  the  truth  in  their  praises ;  in  this 
instance  we  are.  The  Eugenie  is  a  fragment,  or  (as 
Goethe  himself  called  it  in  conversation)  a  torso,  being 
only  the  first  drama  in  a  trilogy  or  series  of  three 
dramas,  each  having  a  separate  plot,  whilst  all  are 
parts  of  a  more  general  and  comprehensive  plan.  It 
may  be  charged  with  languor  in  the  movement  of  the 
action,  and  with  excess  of  illustration.  Thus,  e.  g. 
^he  grief  of  the  prince  for  the  supposed  death  of  his 
daughter,  is  the  monotonous  topic  which  occupies  one 
entire  act.  But  the  situations,  though  not  those  of 
$cenical  distress,  are  so  far  from  being  unexciting,  that, 
tn  the  contrary,  they  are  too  powerfully  afl3icting. 

The  lustre  of  all  these  performances,  however,  'a 
eclipsed  by  the  unrivalled  celebrity  amongst  German 
iritics  of  the  Faust.  Upon  this  it  is  better  to  say 
nothing  than  too  little.  How  trifling  an  advance  has 
been  made  towards  clearing  the  ground  for  any  sane 
criticism,  may  be  understood  from  this  fact,  that  as  ye.* 
no   two    people   have  agreed   about  the  meaning   o* 


OOETHK.  439 

Any  separate  scene,  or  about  the  drift  of  the  whole. 
Neither  is  this  explained  by  saying,  that  until  lately 
the  Faust  was  a  fragment ;  for  no  additional  light  has 
dawned  upon  the  main  question  since  the  publication 
of  the  latter  part. 

One  work  there  is  of  Goethe's  which  falls  into 
neither  of  the  classes  here  noticed ;  we  mean  the 
Hermann  and  Dorothea,  a  narrative  poem,  in  hexa- 
meter verse.  This  appears  to  have  given  more  plea- 
sure to  readers  not  critical,  than  any  other  work  of  its 
author ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that  it  traverses  humbler 
ground,  as  respects  both  it  subject,  its  characters,  and 
its  scenery.  From  this,  and  other  indications  of  the 
same  kind,  we  are  disposed  to  infer  that  Goethe  mis- 
took his  destination ;  that  his  aspiring  nature  misled 
him;  and  that  his  success  would  have  been  greater 
had  he  confined  himself  to  the  real  in  domestic  life, 
vrithout  raising  his  eyes  to  the  ideal. 

We  must  also  mention,  that  Goethe  threw  out  some 
iovel  speculations  in  physical  science,  and  particularly 
in  physiology,  in  the  doctrine  of  colors,  and  in  com- 
parative anatomy,  which  have  divided  the  opinions  of 
critics  even  more  than  any  of  those  questions  which 
have  arisen  upon  points  more  directly  connected  with 
bis  avowed  character  of  poet. 

It  now  remains  to  say  a  few  words  by  way  of  sum- 
ning  up  his  pretensions  as  a  man.  and  his  intellectual 
power  in  the  age  to  which  he  belonged.  His  rank  and 
ralue  as  a  moral  being  are  so  plain  as  to  be  legible  to 
lim  who  runs.  Everybody  must  feel  that  his  tempera- 
ment and  constitutional  tendency  was  of  that  happy 
quality,  the  animal  so  mcely  balanced  with  the  intel- 
ectual,  that  with  any  ordinary  measure  of  propriety 


440  eosTHK. 

be  could  not  be  otnerwise  than  a  good  man.  He 
speaks  himself  of  his  own  '  virtue,'  sans  phrase ;  and 
we  tax  him  with  no  A'anity  in  doing  so.  As  a  young 
man  even  at  the  universities,  which  at  that  time  were 
barbarously  sensual  in  Germany,  he  was  (or  so  much 
we  collect  from  his  own  Memoirs)  eminently  capable 
of  self-restraint.  He  preserves  a  tone  of  gravity,  of 
sincerity,  of  respect  for  female  dignity,  which  we 
never  find  associated  with  the  levity  and  recklessness 
of  vice.  We  feel  throughout,  the  presence  of  one 
who,  in  respecting  others,  respects  himself;  and  the 
cheerfulness  of  the  presiding  tone  persuades  us  at  once 
that  the  narrator  is  in  a  healthy  moral  condition,  fears 
no  ill,  and  is  conscious  of  having  meditated  none. 
Yet  at  the  same  time  we  cannot  disguise  from  our 
selves,  that  the  moral  temperament  of  Goethe  was  one 
which  demanded  prosperity.  Had  he  been  called  to 
face  great  afflictions,  singular  temptations,  or  a  billowy 
and  agitated  course  of  life,  our  belief  is  that  his  nature 
would  have  been  found  unequal  to  the  strife  ;  he  would 
have  repeated  the  mixed  and  moody  character  of  his 
father.  Sunny  prosperity  was  essential  to  his  nature ; 
his  virtues  were  adapted  to  that  condition.  And  hap- 
pily that  was  his  fate.  He  had  no  personal  misfor- 
tunes;  his  path  was  joyous  in  this  life;  and  even  the 
reflex  sorrow  from  the  calamities  of  his  friends  did  not 
press  too  heavily  on  his  sympathies ;  nong"  of  these 
were  in  ex:ess  either  as  to  degree  or  duration. 

In  this  estimate  of  Goethe  as  a  moral  being,  few 
^eople  ■will  difier  with  us,  unless  it  were  the  religious 
bigot.  And  to  him  we  must  concede  thus  much,  that 
Goethe  was  not  that  religious  creature  which  by  natur* 
he  was  intended  to  become.     This  is  to  be  regretted 


OOSTHX.  44\. 

Qoethe  was  naturally  pious  and  reverential  tuwarrls 
higher  natures ;  and  it  was  in  the  mere  levity  or 
wantonness  of  youthful  power,  partly  also  through 
that  early  false  bias  growing  out  of  the  Lisbon  earth- 
quake, that  he  falsified  his  original  destination.  Do 
we  mean,  then,  that  a  chUdisb  error  could  permanently 
master  his  understanding  ?  Not  so  ;  that  would  have 
been  corrected  with  his  growing  strength.  But  having 
once  arisen,  it  must  for  a  long  time  have  moulded  his 
feelings ;  until  corrected,  it  must  have  impressed  a 
corresponding  false  bias  upon  his  practical  way  of 
viewing  things ;  and  that  sort  of  false  bias,  once 
established,  might  long  survive  a  mere  error  of  the 
understanding.  One  thing  is  undeniable,  —  Goethe 
had  so  far  corrupted  and  clouded  his  natural  mind, 
that  he  did  not  look  up  to  God,  or  the  system  of 
things  beyond  the  grave,  with  the  interest  of  reverence 
and  awe,  but  with  the  interest  of  curiosity. 

Goethe,  however,  in  a  moral  estimate,  will  be  viewed 
pretty  uniformly.  But  Goethe  intellectually,  Goethe 
as  a  power  acting  upon  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  that 
B  another  question.  Let  us  put  a  case ;  suppose  that 
Goethe's  death  had  occurred  fifty  years  ago,  that  is,  in 
the  year  1785,  what  would  have  been  the  general  im- 
">ression  ?  Would  Europe  have  felt  a  shock  ?  Would 
Europe  have  been  sensible  even  of  the  event  ?  Not  at 
all ;  it  would  have  been  obscurely  noticed  in  the  news- 
papers of  Germany,  as  the  death  of  a  novelist  who  had 
produced  some  effect  about  ten  years  before.  In  1832, 
It  was  announced  by  the  post-horns  of  all  Europe  as 
Ihe  death  of  him  who  had  written  the  Wilhehi  Meis- 
ter,  the  Iphigenie,  and  the  Faust,  and  who  had  been 
tnthroned  by  some  of  his  admirers  on  the  same  seat 


442  0&BTHS. 

with  Homer  and  Shakspeare,  as  composing  what  they 
termed  the  trinity  of  men  of  genius.  And  yet  it  is  a 
fact,  that,  in  the  opinion  of  some  amongst  the  ac- 
knowledged leaders  of  our  own  literature  for  the  last 
twenty-five  years,  the  Werther  was  superior  to  all 
which  followed  it,  and  for  mere  power  was  the  para- 
mount work  of  Goethe.  For  ourselves,  we  must 
acknowledge  our  assent  upon  the  whole  to  this  ver- 
dict; and  at  the  same  time  we  will  avow  our  belief 
that  the  reputation  of  Goethe  must  decline  for  the 
next  generation  or  two,  until  it  reaches  its  just  level. 
Three  causes,  we  are  persuaded,  have  concurred  to 
push  it  so  far  beyond  the  proportion  of  real  and 
genuine  interest  attached  to  his  works,  for  in  Germany 
his  works  are  little  read,  and  in  this  country  not  at 
all.  First,  his  extraordinary  age  ;  for  the  last  twenty 
years  Goethe  had  been  the  patriai'ch  of  the  Gei-man 
literature.  Secondly,  the  splendor  of  his  official  rank 
at  the  court  of  Weimar;  he  was  the  minister  and 
private  friend  of  the  patriot  sovereign  amongst  the 
princes  of  Germany.  Thirdly,  the  quantity  of  enig- 
matical and  unintelligible  writing  which  he  haa 
designedly  thrown  into  his  latter  works,  by  way  of 
keeping  up  a  system  of  discussion  and  strife  upon 
his  own  meaning  amongst  the  critics  of  his  country. 
These  disputes,  had  his  meaning  been  of  any  value  in 
his  own  eyes,  he  would  naturally  have  settled  by  a  few 
authoritative  words  from  himself;  but  it  was  his  policy 
to  keep  alive  the  feud  in  a  case  where  it  was  of  im- 
portance that  his  name  should  continue  to  agitate  the 
world,  but  of  none  at  all  that  he  should  be  rightly 
Interpreted. 


GOETHE 

AS  REFLECTED  IN  HIS  NOVEL  OF  "WILHELM 
MEISTER." 

To  be  an  eidoloclast  is  not  a  pleasant  office,  because 
«,n  invidious  one.  Whenever  that  can  be  affected, 
♦.herefore,  it  is  prudent  to  devolve  the  odium  of  such 
m  office  upon  the  idol  himself.  Let  the  object  of 
the  false  worship  always,  if  possible,  be  made  his  own 
eidoloclast.  As  respects  "  Wilhelm  Meister,"  this  is 
possible :  and  so  far,  therefore,  as  Goethe's  pretensions 
are  founded  on  that  novel,  Goethe  shall  be  his  own 
eidoloclast.  For  our  own  parts  we  shall  do  no  more 
than  suggest  a  few  principles  of  judgment,  and  recall 
the  hasty  reader  to  his  own  more  honorable  thoughts, 
for  the  purpose  of  giving  an  occasional  impulse  and 
direction  to  his  feelings  on  the  passages  we  may  hap- 
pen to  quote  —  which  passages,  the  very  passages  of 
Goethe,  will  be  their  own  sufficient  review,  and  Mr. 
Goethe's  best  exposure.  We  need  not  waste  time 
in  deprecating  unreasonable  prepossessions :  for,  except 
amongst  his  clannish  coterie  of  partisans  in  London 
(collectively  not  enough  to  fill  the  boudoir  of  a  blue- 
gtocking),  there  are  no  such  prepossessions.  Some, 
indeed,  of  that  coterie  have  on  occasion  of  our  former 
article  pushed  their  partisanship  to  the  extent  of  for- 
getting the  language  of  gentlemen.     This  at  least  haa 


444  "WILHELM    MEISTKR." 

been  reported  to  us.  We  are  sorry  for  them ;  net  an 
gry  on  our  account,  nor  much  surprised.  They  are  to 
a  certain  degree  excusably  irritable  from  the  conscious- 
ness of  being  unsupported  and  unsteadied  by  general 
sympathy.  Sectarians  are  allowably  ferocious.  How 
ever,  we  shall  reply  only  by  recalling  a  little  anecdote 
of  John  Henderson,"  in  the  spirit  of  which  w^e  mean  to 
BCt.  Upon  one  occasion,  when  he  was  disputing  at  a 
dinner  party,  his  opponent  being  pressed  by  some  ar- 
gument too  strong  for  his  logic  or  his  temper,  replied 
by  throwing  a  glass  of  wine  in  his  face ;  upon  which 
Henderson,  with  the  dignity  of  a  scholar  who  felt  too 
justly  how  much  this  boyish  petulance  had  disgraced 
his  antagonist  to  be  in  any  danger  of  imitating  it,  coolly 
wiped  his  face,  and  said,  "  This,  sir,  is  a  digression  ; 
now,  if  you  please,  for  the  argument."  '^ 

And  now,  if  you  please,  for  our  argument.  What 
shall  that  be  ?  How  shall  we  conduct  it  ?  As  far  as 
is  possible,  the  translator  of  "  Wilhelm  Meister  "  would 
deny  us  the  benefit  of  any  argument ;  for  thus  plain- 
tively he  seeks  to  forestall  us  (Preface,  xii.),  "  Every 
vnan's  judgment  is,  in  this  free  country,  a  lamp  to  him- 
celf "  {Free  country  !  why,  we  hope  there  is  no  despot- 
ism so  absolute,  no  not  in  Turkey,  nor  Algiers,  where 
a  man  may  not  publish  his  opinion  of  "  Wilhelm  Meis- 
er!"):  "and  many,  it  is  to  be  feared,  will  insist  on 
judging  Meister  by  the  common  rule ;  and,  what  is 
worse,  condemning  it,  let  Schlegel  bawl  as  loudly  as  he 
pleases."  This  puts  us  in  mind  of  a  diverting  story  in 
the  memoirs  of  an  old  Cavalier,  published  by  Sir  Wal- 
ter Scott.  At  the  close  of  the  Parliamentary  War  he 
•ras  undergoing  some  examination  (about  passports,  at 


"WILHELM   MEI8TEE."  44fi' 

we  recollect)  by  the  Mayor  of  Hull ;  upon  which  oc- 
casion the  mayor,  who  was  a  fierce  fanatic,  said  to  him 
some  such  words  as  these :  "  Now,  captain,  you  know 
that  God  has  judged  between  you  and  us :  and  has 
given  us  the  victory,  praise  be  unto  his  name !  and  yei 
you  see  how  kindly  the  Parliament  treats  you.  But,  if 
the  victory  had  gone  the  other  way,  and  you  of  the 
malignant  party  had  stood  in  our  shoes,  I  suppose 
now,  captain,  you  would  have  evil-entreated  us  ;  would 
have  put  all  manner  of  affronts  upon  us ;  kicked  us 
peradventure,  pulled  our  noses,  called  us  sons  of  w — s." 
•'  You  're  in  the  right  on't,  sir,"  was  the  reply  of  the 
bluff  captain,  to  the  great  indignation  of  the  mayor, 
and  infinite  fun  of  the  good-natured  aldermen.  So 
also,  when  the  translator  tells  us  that  it  is  to  be  feared 
that  many  will  condemn  "  Wilhelm  Meister  "  in  spite  of 
Schlegel's  vociferation,  we  reply,  "  You  're  in  the  right 
on't,  sir : "  they  will  do  so ;  and  Schlegel  is  not  the 
man,  neither  William  nor  Frederick,  to  frighten  them 
from  doing  so.  We  have  extracted  this  passage,  how- 
ever, for  the  sake  of  pointing  the  reader's  eye  to  one 
word  in  it :  "  many  will  judge  it  by  the  common  i-ule." 
What  rule  is  that  ?  The  translator  well  knows  that 
there  is  no  rule ;  no  rule  which  can  stand  in  the  way 
of  fair  and  impartial  criticism ;  and  that  he  is  conjur- 
ing up  a  bugbear  which  has  no  existence.  In  the  sin- 
gle cases  of  epic  and  dramatic  poetry  (but  in  these 
only  as  regards  the  mechanism  of  the  fable)  certain 
rules  have  undoubtedly  obtained  an  authority  which 
may  prejudice  the  cause  of  a  writer ;  not  so  much, 
however,  by  corrupting  sound  criticism,  as  by  occupy- 
og  its  place      But  with  regard  to  a  novel,  there  is  no 


i46  "WILHELM    MEI8TKR." 

rule  which  has  obtained  any  '■^prescription"  (to  speak 
the  language  of  civil  law)  but  the  golden  rule  of  good 
sense  and  just  feeling ;  and  the  translator  well  knows 
that  in  such  a  case,  if  a  man  were  disposed  to  shelter 
his  own  want  of  argument  under  the  authority  of  some 
"common  rule,"  he  can  find  no  such  rule  to  plead. 
How  do  men  generally  criticise  a  novel  ?  Just  as  they 
examine  the  acts  and  conduct,  moral  or  prudential,  of 
their  neighbors.  And  how  is  that  ?  Is  it  by  quoting 
the  Nichomachean  Ethics  of  Aristotle  ?  Do  they  pro- 
ceed as  the  French  Consul  did  when  the  Dey  of  Tunig 
informed  him  that  he  meant  to  cut  off  his  head  ?  Upon 
which 

"  The  Consul  quoted  Wickefort 
And  Puffendorf  and  Grotius; 
And  proved  from  Vattel 
Exceedingly  well, 
Such  a  deed  would  be  quite  atrocious." 

No :  they  never  trouble  Puffendorf  and  Grotius ; 
but  try  the  case  "  proprio  marte,"  appealing  only  to 
their  own  judgments  and  their  own  feelings.  This  is 
wise,  they  say,  and  that  is  foolish ;  this  is  indecorous, 
and  that  is  inconsistent :  this  argues  a  bad  motive,  and 
that  leads  to  a  bad  consequence.  Or  if  the  novel  be 
German,  this  is  indictedly  indecent.  In  this  way  they 
judge  of  actions,  in  this  way  of  a  novel ;  and  in  this 
way  we  shall  judge  of  "  Wilhelm  Meister  " ;  and  cannot 
allow  that  our  criticism  shall  be  forestalled  by  any  pre- 
tence that  we  are  opposing  mechanic  rules,  which  do 
not  and  cannot  exist,  to  the  natural  and  spontaneous 
movements  of  the  unprejudiced  judgment 

"  Scribendi  recte  sapeue  est  principium  et  fons"  — 


"WILHELM    MEISTER."  447 

Good  sense  is  the  principle  and  fountain  of  all  juw 
composition.  This  is  orthodox  doctrine  all  over  the 
world,  or  ought  to  be.  Next,  we  presume  that  in  all 
latitudes  and  under  every  meridian  a  poet  stands  amen- 
able to  criticism  for  the  quality  of  his  sentiments  and 
the  passions  he  attributes  to  his  heroes,  heroines,  and 
"  pattern  people."  That  the  general  current  of  feeling 
should  be  deeper  than  that  of  ordinary  life,  nobler, 
and  purer,  —  is  surely  no  unreasonable  postulate  :  else 
wherefore  is  he  a  poet  ?  Now  within  a  short  compass 
there  is  no  better  test  by  which  we  can  try  the  style 
and  tone  of  a  poet's  feelings  than  his  ideal  of  the  fe- 
male character  as  expressed  in  his  heroines.  For  this 
purpose  we  will  have  a  general  turn-out  and  field-day 
for  Mr.  Goethe's  ladies.  They  shall  all  parade  before 
the  reader.  This,  while  it  answers  our  end,  will  pro- 
vide for  his  amusement.  Such  a  display  will  be  suffi- 
cient for  the  style  of  sentiment;  as  to  the  good  sense, 
that  will  be  adequately  put  on  record  by  every  part  of 
our  analysis. 

Now  therefore  turn  out,  ye  belles  of  Germany  !  turn 
out  before  London  on  this  fine  26th  of  August,  1824. 
Place  aux  dames  !  Let  us  have  a  grand  procession  to 
the  temple  of  Paphos  with  its  hundred  altars  ;  and  Mr. 
Goethe,  nearly  fifty  years  old  at  the  date  of  "  Wilhelm 
Meister,"  shall  be  the  high-priest ;  and  we  will  exhibit 
him  surrounded  by  all  "  his  young  Corinthian  laity."  " 
Here  then,  reader,  is  Mr.  Goethe  s 

I.  GALLERY  OF  FEMALE  PORTRAITS. 

Mariana.  —  No.  1  is  Mariana,  a  young  actresSi 
^'itb  her  the  novel  opens:  and  her  situation  is  this* 


448-  "Wn.HELM    MF.ISTER." 

She  is  connected  in  the  tenderest  style  of  clandestine 
attachment  with  Wilhelm  Meister  the  hero.  Matters 
have  gone  so  far  that  she  —  how  shall  we  express  it  ? 
Oh!  the  German  phrase  is  that  —  she  "carries  a 
pledge  of  love  beneath  her  bosom."  Well,  suppose 
she  does :  what 's  that  to  us  ;  us  and  the  reader  ?  Why 
nothing,  we  allow,  unless  she  asks  us  to  advance  money 
on  the  pledge.  The  reader  is  yet  but  in  the  vestibule 
of  the  tale :  he  is  naturally  willing  to  be  pleased,  and 
mdisposed  to  churlish  constructions.  Undoubtedly  he 
is  sorry :  wishes  it  had  been  otherwise ;  but  he  is  hu- 
man himself;  and  he  recollects  the  old  excuse  which 
will  be  pleaded  on  this  frail  planet  of  ours  for  thou- 
sands of  years  after  we  are  all  in  our  graves  —  that 
they  were  both  young,  and  that  she  was  artless  and 
beautiful.  And  finally  he  forgives  them ;  and  if,  at 
the  end  of  the  third  volume  when  they  must  necessa- 
rily be  a  good  deal  older,  he  finds  them  still  as  much 
attached  to  each  other  as  when  their  hearts  were 
young,  he  would  feel  it  presumption  in  himself  to  re- 
member the  case  as  a  transgression.  But  what  is  this  ? 
Hardly  have  we  gone  a  few  pages  further,  before  we 
find  that  —  about  one  month  before  this  lady  had  sur- 
rendered her  person  to  the  hero  —  she  had  granted  all 
she  could  grant  to  one  Mr.  Norberg,  a  merchant  and 
a  vile  sensualist.  True,  says  the  book,  but  that  was 
for  money ;  she  had  no  money,  and  how  could  she  do 
•rithout  money  ?  Whereas  now,  on  the  contrary,  in 
Wilhelm's  case  it  could  not  be  for  money ;  for  why  ?  he 
had  none ;  ergo,  it  was  for  love  —  pure  love.  Besides, 
she  was  vexed  that  she  had  ever  encouraged  Norberg 
*fter  she  came  to  be  acquainted  with  Wilhelm.  Vexed 


•♦WIL/IKLM    MEISTER."  449 

bat  did  she  resolve  to  break  with  Norberg  ?  Once  or 
twice  she  treated  him  harshly,  it  is  true  ;  but  hear  her 
latest  cabinet  council  on  this  matter  with  her  old  infa- 
mous attendant  (p.  65,  i.)  :  — 

" '  I  have  no  choice,'  continued  Mariana ;  *  do  you 
decide  for  me  !  Cast  me  away  to  this  side  or  to  that ; 
mark  only  one  thing.  I  think  I  carry  in  my  bosom  a 
pledge  that  ought  to  unite  me  with  him  (^.  e.,  Wilhelm) 
more  closely.  Consider  and  determine :  whom  shall  I 
forsake  ?  whom  shall  I  follow  ? ' 

"  After  a  short  silence,  Barbara  exclaimed :  '  Strange 
that  youth  should  still  be  for  extremes.'  "  By  extremes 
Barbara  means  keeping  only  one ;  her  way  of  avoiding 
extremes  is  to  keep  both.  But  hear  the  hag :  "  To  my 
view  nothing  would  be  easier  than  for  us  to  combine 
both  the  profit  and  enjoyment.  Do  you  love  the  one, 
let  the  other  pay  for  it ;  all  we  have  to  mind  is  being 
sharp  enough  to  keep  the  two  from  meeting." 

Certainly,  that  would  be  awkward ;  and  now  what 
is  Mariana's  answer  ?  "  Do  as  you  please  ;  I  can  im- 
agine nothing,  but  I  will  follow."  Bab  schemes,  and 
Poll  executes.  The  council  rises  with  the  following 
suggestion  from  the  hag :  "  Who  knows  what  circum- 
stances may  arise  to  help  us  ?  If  Norberg  would 
trrive  even  now,  when  Wilhelm  is  away  !  who  can 
hinder  you  from  thinking  of  the  one  in  the  arms  of 
the  other  ?  I  wish  you  a  son  and  good  fortune  with 
him :  he  will  have  a  luch  father." 

Adopting   this   advice,  the   lady   receives  Wilhelm 

iressed  in  the  clothes  furnished  by  Norberg.     She  is, 

however,  found   out  by  Wilhelm,  who   forsakes  her  ; 

uid  in  the  end  she  dies.     Her  death  la  announced  in 

19 


450  "  WILnELM    MEISTER." 

the  high  German  style  to  Wilhelm  :  old  Bab  places  a 
bottle  of  champagne  and  three  glasses  on  the  table. 
Then  the  scene  proceeds  thus :  "  Wilhelm  knew  not 
what  to  say,  when  the  crone  in  fact  let  go  the  cork,  and 
and  filled  the  three  glasses  to  the  brim.  Drink  !  "  cried 
she,  having  emptied  at  a  draught  her  foaming  glass. 
"  Drink  ere  the  spirit  of  it  pass  !  This  third  glass 
shall  froth  away  untasted  to  the  memory  of  my  un- 
happy Mariana.  How  red  were  her  lips  when  she  last 
drank  your  health  !  Ah !  and  now  forever  pale  and 
cold  !  "  At  the  next  Pitt  or  Fox  dinner  this  sugges- 
tion may  perhaps  be  attended  to.  Mr.  Pitt  of  course 
will  have  a  bottle  of  good  old  port  set  for  him,  for  he 
drank  no  champagne.  As  Kotzebue  hastened  from 
Germany  to  the  Palais  Royal  of  Paris  for  consolation 
on  the  death  of  his  wife,  so  does  Wilhelm  on  reading 
his  sweetheart's  farewell  letters  abscond  in  a  transport 
of  grief  to  —  a  coffeehouse,  where  he  disputes  upon 
the  stage  and  acting  in  general.  We  are  rather  sorry 
for  this  young  creature  after  all :  she  has  some  ingenu- 
ous feelings  ;  and  she  is  decidedly  the  second  best  per- 
son in  the  novel.  The  child,  which  she  leaves  behind, 
is  fathered  by  old  Bab  (drunk  perhaps)  upon  every 
man  she  meets ;  and  she  absolutely  extorts  money 
from  one  or  other  person  on  account  of  three  different 
fathers.  If  she  meets  the  reader,  she  '11  father  it  upon 
him.  In  the  hands  now  of  a  skilfiil  artist  this  surviv- 
ing memorial  of  the  frail  Mariana  might  have  been 
turned  to  some  account :  by  Mr.  Goethe  it  is  used  only 
as  a  handle  for  covermg  his  hero  with  irresistible  ridi 
cule.  He  doubts  whether  he  is  the  father  of  the 
shild ;  and  goes   about,  asking  people  in  effect,  "  Do 


"WILHELM    MEI8TEB."  451 

fou  think  I  can  be  the  father?  Really  now,  on  your 
honor,  has  he  a  look  of  me  ? "  That  Mariana's  con- 
duct had  given  him  little  reason  to  confide  in  anything 
she  could  say  except  upon  her  death-bed,  we  admit; 
and,  as  to  old  Bab's  assurances,  they  clearly  were  .open 
to  that  objection  of  the  logicians  —  that  they  proved 
nothing  by  proving  a  little  too  much.  But  can  any 
gravity  stand  the  ridicule  of  a  father's  sitting  down  to 
examine  his  child's  features  by  his  own  ?  and  that  he, 
who  would  not  believe  the  dying  and  heart-broken 
mother,  is  finally  relieved  from  his  doubts  (p.  120,  iii.) 
by  two  old  buiFoons,  who  simply  assure  him  that  the 
child  is  his,  and  thus  pretend  to  an  authority  transcend- 
ing that  of  the  mother  herself?     But  pass  to 

No.  2.  Philina.  —  This  lady  is  a  sort  of  amalgam  of 
Doll  Tear-sheet  and  the  Wife  of  Bath  ;  as  much  of  a 
termagant  as  the  first,  and  as  frank  hearted  as  the  sec- 
ond. Mr.  Goethe's  account  of  the  matter  (p.  172,  i.) 
is,  that  "  her  chief  enjoyment  lay  in  loving  one  class  of 
men,  and  being  loved  by  them."  In  all  particulars, 
but  the  good  ones,  she  resembles  poor  Mariana :  like 
her  she  is  an  actress  ;  like  her  she  has  her  "  pledge  ;  " 
and  like  Mariana's,  this  pledge  is  open  to  doubts  of 
the  learned  on  the  question  of  its  paternity ;  for,  like 
her,  she  is  not  content  with  one  lover ;  not  however, 
like  her,  content  with  two,  for  she  has  nearer  to  two 
dozen.  She  plays  off  the  battery  of  her  charms  upon 
every  man  she  meets  with :  the  carnage  is  naturally 
great ;  so  that  we  had  half  a  mind  to  draw  up  a  list  of 
the  killed  and  wounded.  But  we  must  hurry  onwards. 
WTiat  becomes  of  her  the  reader  never  learns.  Among 
ler  lovers,  who  in  general  keep  her,  is  one  whom  she 


453  "  WILHELU    MEI8TEB.' 

keeps :  for  be  is  her  footman ;  a  "  fair  haired  boy  "  oi 
family.  Him  sbe  kicks  out  of  ber  service  in  vol.  the 
first,  p.  174,  ostensibly  be  will  not  lay  the  cloth;  but 
in  fact  because  he  has  no  more  money ;  as  appears  by 
p.  228,  vol.  ii.,  where  she  takes  him  back  on  his  having 
"  cozened  from  his  friends  a  fresh  supply ; "  and  to  biro 
she  finally  awards  ber  "  pledge,"  and  we  think  she  does 
right.  For  he  is  a  fine  young  lad  —  this  Frederick 
and  we  like  him  much  :  he  is  generous  and  not  suspi- 
cious as  "  our  friend"  Wilbelm  ;  and  be  is  par  paren- 
these  a  great  fool,  who  is  willing  to  pass  for  sucb, 
which  the  graver  fools  of  the  novel  are  not ;  they  be- 
ing all  "  philosophers. "  Thus  pleasantly  does  this 
believing  man  report  the  case  to  the  infidel  Wilbelm. 
"  'Tis  a  foolish  business  that  I  must  be  raised  at  last 
to  the  paternal  dignity :  but  sbe  asserts,  and  the  time 
agrees.  At  first,  that  cursed  visit,  which  she  paid  you 
after  Hamlet,  gave  me  qualms.  The  pretty  flesh-and- 
blood  spirit  of  that  night,  if  you  do  not  know  it,  wag 
Philina.  This  story  was  in  truth  a  hard  dower  for 
me,  but  if  we  cannot  be  contented  with  such  things, 
we  should  not  be  in  love.  Fatherhood  at  any  rate  de- 
pends entirely  upon  conviction  ;  I  am  convinced,  and 
BO  I  am  a  father."  But  time  presses :  so  adieu  !  most 
philanthropic  Philina  ;  thou  lover  of  all  mankind  ? 

No.  3.  is  Mrs.  Melina.  —  She  also  is  an  actress  with 
a  "  pledge,"  and  so  forth.  But  she  marries  the  father, 
Herr  Melina,  and  we  are  inclined  to  hope  that  aU  will 
now  be  well.  And  certainly  as  far  as  page  so  and  so, 
the  reader  or  ourselves,  if  summoned  by  Mrs.  Melina 
on  any  trial  affecting  her  reputation,  would  be  most 
happy  to  say  that  whatever  little  circumstances  migh . 


**  WILHELM    HEISTEB."  453 

have  come  to  our  knowledge,  which  as  gentlemen  we 
could  not  possibly  use  to  the  prejudice  of  a  lady,  we 
yet  fully  believed  her  to  be  as  irreproachable  as  that 
lady  who  only  of  all  King  Arthur's  court  had  the 
qualification  of  chastity  for  wearing  the  magic  girdle ; 
and  yet  it  shrank  a  little,*"  until  she  made  a  blushing 
confession  that  smoothed  its  wrinkles.  This  would  be 
our  evidence  up  perhaps  to  the  end  of  vol.  i. ;  yet 
afterwards  it  comes  out  that  she  "  sighed "  for  Mr. 
Meister ;  and  that  if  she  sighed  in  vain,  it  was  no  fault 
of  hers. 

The  manners  of  these  good  people  are  pretty  much 
on  a  level  with  their  characters :  our  impression  is  that 
all  are  drunk  together,  —  men,  women  and  children ; 
women  are  seen  lying  on  the  sofa  "  in  no  very  elegant 
position  :  "  the  children  knock  their  heads  against  the 
table :  one  plays  the  harp,  one  the  triangle,  another  the 
tambourine :  some  sing  canons  ;  another  "  whistles  in 
the  manner  of  a  nightingale;"  another  "gives  a  sym- 
phony pianissimo  upon  the  Jew's  harp : "  and  last  of 
all  comes  an  ingenious  person  who  well  deserves  to  be 
imported  by  Covent  Garden  for  the  improvement  of 
the  incantations  in  Der  Freischiitz  ;  "  by  way  of  termi- 
nation, Serlo  (the  manager)  gave  a  firework,  or  what 
resembled  one :  for  he  could  imitate  the  sound  of 
crackers,  rockets,  and  firewheels,  with  his  mouth,  in  a 
style  of  nearly  inconceivable  correctness.  You  had 
only  to  shut  your  eyes,  and  the  deception  was  com- 
plete. "  After  the  lyrical  confusion  of  these  Dutch 
3oncert8  "it  follows  of  course  that  men  and  women 
ding  their  glasses  into  the  street,  the  men  fling  the 
piuioh-bowl  at  each  other's  heads,  and  a  storm  sucoeedf 


i54  "  WILHELM    MKIBTEB." 

irhich  the  watch  (Neptune  and  his  Tritons)  " "  are 
called  in  to  appease.  Even  from  personal  uucleanli- 
ness  Mi.  Goethe  thinks  it  possible  to  derive  a  grace. 
"  The  white  negligee  "  of  Philina,  because  it  was  "  not 
supers  titiously  clean  "  is  said  to  have  given  her  "  a 
frank  and  domestic  air."  But  the  highest  scene  of  this 
nature  is  the  bedroom  of  Mariana;  it  passes  all  belief; 
"  Combs,  soap,  towels,  with  the  traces  of  their  use,  were 
not  concealed.  Music,  portions  of  plays,  and  pairs  of 
shoes,  washes  and  Italian  flowers,  pincushions,  hair- 
skewers,  rouge-pots  and  ribbons,  books  and  straw-hats 
—  all  were  united  by  a  common  element,  powder  and 
dust."  This  is  the  room  into  which  she  introduces  her 
lover :  and  this  is  by  no  means  the  worst  part  of  the  de- 
scription :  the  last  sentence  is  too  bad  for  quotation,  and 
appears  to  have  been  the  joint  product  of  Dean  Swift 
and  a  German  Sentimentalist. 

Well,  but  these  people  are  not  people  of  condition. 
Come  we  then  to  two  women  of  rank ;  and  first  for 

llie  Countess,  who  shall  be  No.  4  in  the  Goethian 
gallery.  Wilhelm  Meister  has  come  within  her  hus- 
band's castle  gates  attached  to  a  company  of  strolling 
players :  and  if  any  slight  distinctions  are  made  in  his 
favor,  they  are  tributes  to  his  personal  merits,  and  not 
at  all  to  any  such  pretensions  as  could  place  him  on  a 
level  with  a  woman  of  quality.  In  general  he  is 
treated  as  his  companions ;  who  seem  to  be  viewed  as 
a  tertium  quod  between  footmen  and  dogs.  Indeed, 
the  dogs  have  the  advantage ;  for  no  doubt  the  dogs  of 
a  German  "  Graf  "  have  substantial  kennels  ;  whereas 
Wilhelm  and  his  party,  on  presenting  themselves  at 
the  inhabited  castle  of  the  Count,  are  dismissed  with 


"  WILHELM    MEI8TEK."  455 

mockery  and  insults  to  an  old  dilapidated  building  which 
ts  not  weather-proof ;  and,  though  invited  guests,  are 
inhospitably  left  without  refreshments,  fire,  or  candles, 
in  the  midst  of  storm,  rain,  and  darkness.  In  some 
points  they  are  raised  to  a  level  with  the  dogs ;  for  as  a 
man  will  now  and  then  toss  a  bone  to  a  favorite  pointer, 
BO  does  a  guest  of  the  Count's  who  patronizes  merit 
"  contrive  to  send  over  many  an  odd  bottle  of  cham> 
pagne  to  the  actors."  In  others  they  even  think  them- 
selves far  above  the  dogs  ;  for  "  many  times,  particu- 
larly after  dinner,  the  whole  company  were  called  out 
before  the  noble  guests  ;  an  honor  which  the  artists  re- 
garded as  the  most  flattering  in  the  world  :  "  but  others 
question  the  inference,  observing  "  that  on  these  very 
occasions  the  servants  and  huntsmen  were  ordered  to 
bring  in  a  multitude  of  hounds,  and  to  lead  strings  of 
horses  about  the  court  of  the  castle."  Such  is  the 
rank  which  Mr.  Meister  holds  in  her  ladyship's  estab- 
lishment; and  note  that  he  has  hardly  been  in  her 
presence  more  than  once ;  on  which  occasion  he  is 
summoned  to  read  to  her,  but  not  allowed  to  proceed, 
and  finally  dismissed  with  the  present  of  a  "  waistcoat." 
Such  being  the  position  of  a  waistcoateer  in  regard  to 
the  Countess,  which  we  have  sketched  with  a  careful 
Belection  of  circumstances,  let  the  reader  now  say  what 
he  thinks  of  the  following  scena  —  and  of  the  "  pure 
Boul "  (p.  300,  i.)  of  that  noble  matron  who  is  joint  per- 
former in  it.  Wilhelm  has  been  summoned  again  tc 
read  before  the  ladies,  merely  because  they  "  felt  the 
time  rather  tedious  "  whilst  waiting  for  company,  and 
IB  perhaps  anticipating  a  pair  of  trowsers  to  match  hi^ 
vautcoat.     Being  ^  ordered  "  by  the  ladies  tc  read,  he 


456  "  WILHKLM   MEISTEK." 

reads :  but  his  weak  mind  is  so  overwhelmed  by  the 
Bplendid  dress  of  the  Countess  that  he  reads  very  ill. 
Bad  reading  is  not  a  thing  to  be  stood :  and  accord- 
ingly, on  different  pretexts,  the  other  ladies  retire,  and 
he  is  left  alone  with  the  Countess.  She  has  presented 
him  not  with  a  pair  of  trowsers,  as  we  falsely  predicted, 
but  with  a  diamond  ring :  he  has  knelt  down  to  thank 
her,  and  has  seized  her  left  hand.  Then  the  scena 
proceeds  thus :  "  He  kissed  her  hand,  and  meant  to 
rise ;  but  as  in  dreams  some  strange  thing  fades  and 
changes  into  something  stranger,  so,  without  knowing 
how  it  happened,  he  found  the  Countess  in  his  arms  ; 
her  lips  were  resting  upon  his  ;  and  their  warm  mutual 
kisses  were  yielding  them  that  blessedness,  which  mor- 
tals sip  from  the  topmost  sparkling  foam  on  the  freshly 
poured  cup  of  love.  Her  head  lay  upon  his  shoulder ; 
the  disordered  ringlets  and  ruffles  were  forgotten.  She 
had  thrown  her  arm  around  him  :  he  clasped  her  with 
vivacity ;  and  pressed  her  again  and  again  to  his 
breast.  Oh  that  such  a  moment  could  but  last  forever ! 
And  woe  to  envious  fate  that  shortened  even  this  brief 
moment  to  our  friends  !  "  Well  done,  Mr.  Goethe  ! 
It  well  befits  that  he  who  thinks  it  rational  to  bully 
fate,  should  think  it  laudable  and  symptomatic  of  "  a 
pure  soul "  to  act  as  this  German  matron  acts  with  this 
itinerant  player.  It  is  true  that  she  tears  herself  away 
•'  with  a  shriek  ; "  but  the  shriek,  as  we  discover  long 
afterwards,  proceeds  not  from  any  pangs  of  conscience 
but  from  pangs  of  body  ;  Wilhelm  having  pressed  too 
closely  against  a  miniature  of  her  husband  which  hung 
at  her  bosom.  There  is  another  scena  of  a  still  worse 
description  prepared  for  the  Countess  ^  but  interruptei 


"  WILIIELM    MEISTEU."  457 

by  tlie  sudden  return  of  the  Count  for  which  we  have 
no  room,  and  in  which  the  next  lady  on  the  roll  plays 
a  part  for  which  decorum  nas  no  name.     This  lady  is 

The  Baroness  ;  and  she  is  the  friend  and  companion 
of  the  Countess.  Whilst  the  latter  was  dallying  with 
"  our  friend,"  "  the  Baroness,  in  the  meantime,  had 
selected  Laertes,  who,  being  a  spirited  and  lively  young 
man,  pleased  her  very  much  ;  and  who,  woman-hater 
as  he  was,  felt  unwilling  to  refuse  a  passing  adventure." 
Laertes,  be  it  observed  —  this  condescending  gentle- 
man who  is  for  once  disposed  to  relax  his  general  rule 
of  conduct  in  favor  of  the  Baroness  —  is  also  a  stroll- 
ing player,  and  being  such  is  of  course  a  sharer  in  the 
general  indignities  thrown  upon  the  theatrical  com- 
pany. In  the  present  case  his  "  passing  adventure  " 
was  unpleasantly  disturbed  by  a  satirical  remark  of 
the  lady's  husband,  who  was  aware  of  his  intentions ; 
for  Laertes  "  happening  once  to  celebrate  her  praises, 
and  give  her  the  preference  to  every  other  of  her  sex, 
the  Baron  with  a  grin  replied;  'I  see  how  matters 
stand:  our  fair  friend  {xneai,m\\g  hj  our  fair  friend  \\i^ 
own  wife)  has  got  a  fresh  inmate  for  her  stalls.  Every 
stranger  thinks  he  is  the  first  whom  this  manner  has 
concerned:  but  he  is  grievously  mistaken  ;  for  all  of 
us,  at  one  time  or  another,  have  been  trotted  round  this 
course.  Man,  youth,  or  boy,  be  he  who  he  like,  each 
must  devote  himself  to  her  service  for  a  season  ;  must 
hang  about  her ;  and  toil  and  long  to  gain  her  favor.' " 
(Page  284,  i.)  "  After  this  discovery,  Laertes  felt 
heartily  ashamed  that  vanity  should  have  again  misled 
him  to  think  well,  even  in  the  smallest  degree,  of  any 
woman  whatsoever."     That  the    Baroness  wished   to 


458  *'  WILUELM   MEISTKB." 

intrigue  with  himself  was  so  far  a  reason  vvitli  h.m  for 
"  thinking  well  "  of  her  ;  but  that  she  could  ever  have 
thought  anybody  else  worthy  of  this  honor  restores 
him  to  his  amiable  abhorrence  of  her  sex ;  and  forth 
with  "  he  forsook  the  Baroness  entirely."  By  the 
way,  how  Laertes  came  by  his  hatred  of  women,  and 
the  abominable  history  of  his  "  double  wounds,"  the 
reader  must  look  for  in  Mr.  Goethe :  in  German  novels 
such  things  may  be  tolerated,  as  also  in  English  broth- 
els ;  and  it  may  be  sought  for  in  either  place ;  but  for 
ns,  nous  autres  Anglois, — 

"  Non  licet  esse  tarn  disertis 
Qui  musas  cotimus  severiores." 

Forsaken  by  Laertes,  the  Baroness  looks  about  for 
a  substitute  ;  and,  finding  no  better,  she  takes  up  with 
one  Mr.  Jarno.  And  who  is  Mr.  Jarno  ?  What  part 
does  he  play  in  this  play  ?  He  is  an  old  gentleman, 
who  has  the  honor  to  be  also  a  major  and  a  philoso- 
pher ;  and  he  plays  the  parts  of  bore,  of  ninny,  and 
also  (but  not  with  equal  success)  of  Socrates.  Him 
then,  this  Major  Socrates,  for  want  of  some  Alcibiades, 
the  Baroness  condescends  to  "  trot,"  as  the  Baron 
phrases  it ;  and  trotting  him  we  shall  leave  her.  For 
what  she  does  in  her  own  person,  the  reader  will  not 
be  disposed  to  apply  any  very  respectful  names  to  her 
but  one  thing  there  is  which  she  attempts  to  do  for  her 
friend  the  Countess  (as  Goethe  acknowledges  at  p. 
306,  i.),  which  entitles  her  to  a  still  worse  name ;  a 
name  not  in  our  vocabulary;  but  it  will  be  found  it 
that  of  Mr.  Goethe,  who  applies  it  (but  very  superfla 
ously)  to  old  Barbara. 

Theresa.  —  This  lady  is  thus  described  by  Mr.  Jarno 


"  yriLIlKLH  MEISTER."  459 

'Fratilein  Theresa  (t.  «.,  in  French  English,  Mees 
Terese)  is  a  lady  such  as  you  will  rarely  see.  She 
puts  many  a  man  to  shame :  I  may  say  she  is  a  genu- 
ine Amazon,  while  others  are  but  pretty  counterfeits, 
that  wander  up  and  down  the  world  in  that  ambiguoug 
dress."  Yes,  an  Amazon  she  is  —  not  destined  we 
hope  to  propagate  the  race  in  England  —  although,  by 
the  way,  not  the  Amazon  ;  ^  however,  she  is  far  better 
entitled  to  the  name,  for  in  "  putting  men  to  shame  " 
she  is  not  exceeded  by  any  lady  in  the  novel.  Her 
first  introduction  to  "  our  friend  "  is  a  fair  specimen  of 
Amazonian  bienseance.  The  reader  must  understand 
that  Wilhelm  has  just  arrived  at  her  house  as  an  in- 
vited guest :  has  never  seen  her  before  ;  and  that  both 
the  lady  and  himself  are  young  unmarried  persons. 
"  She  entered  Wilhelm's  room,  inquiring  if  he  wanted 
anything.  '  Pardon  me,'  said  she,  '  for  having  lodged 
you  in  a  chamber  which  the  smell  of  paint  still  renders 
liisagreeable ;  my  little  dwelling  is  but  just  made  ready  ; 
you  are  handselling  this  room,  which  is  appointed  for 
my  guests.  In  other  points  you  have  many  things  to 
pardon.  My  cook  has  run  away,  and  a  serving-man 
bas  bruised  his  hand.  I  might  (might?)  be  forced  to 
manage  all  myself;  and  if  it  were  so  (were  so?),  we 
must  just**  put  up  with  it.  One  is  plagued  with  no- 
body so  much  as  with  one's  servants ;  not  one  of  them 
will  serve  you,  scarcely  even  serve  himself.'  She  said  a 
good  deal  more  on  different  matters ,  in  general  she 
seemed  to  like  to  speak."  This  the  reader  will  find  no 
difficulty  in  allowing ;  for,  in  answer  to  the  very  first 
words  that  Wilhelm  utters,  she  proposes  to  tell  him  her 
•vhole  history  in  a  confidential  way.    Listen  to  her :  tha« 


160  "  WILHELM    ME18TKR." 

■peaks  the  Amazonian  Fraiilein  (p.  39,  iii.)  "  Let  as 
get  entirely  acquainted  as  speedily  as  possible.  The 
history  of  every  person  paints  his  character.  I  will 
tell  you  what  my  life  has  been  :  do  you  too  place  a 
little  trust  in  me ;  and  let  us  be  united  even  when 
distance  parts  us."  Such  is  the  sentimental  overture ; 
after  which  the  reader  will  not  be  surprised  to  learn 
that  in  the  evening  Wilhelm's  chamber  door  openg,  and 
in  steps  with  a  bow  a  "  handsome  hunter  boy,"  viz., 
Fraiilein  Theresa  in  boy's  clothes  "  Come  along  !  "  says 
she ;  "  and  they  went  accordingly."  (Page  43.)  As  they 
walked,  "  among  some  general  remarks,"  Theresa  asked 
him  the  following  question  —  not  general,  but  "  London 
particular:"  ^'^  Are  you  free'}"  meaning  free  to  make 
proposals  to  any  woman  he  met).  "  I  think  I  am," 
said  he ;  "  and  yet  I  do  not  wish  it."  By  which  he 
meant  that  he  thought  Mariana  was  dead,  but  (kind 
creature)  "  did  not  wish  "  her  to  be  dead.  "  Good  !  " 
said  she;  "  that  indicates  a  complicated  story :  you  also 
will  have  something  to  relate."  Conversing  thus,  they 
ascended  the  height,  and  placed  themselves  beside  a 
ofty  oak,  "  Here,"  said  she,  "  beneath  this  German 
tree  will  I  disclose  to  you  the  history  of  a  German 
Miaiden :  listen  to  me  patiently  "  (p.  44)  :  that  is,  we  sup- 
pose, with  a  German  patience.  But  English  patience 
vill  not  tolerate  what  follows.  We  have  already  seen 
something  of  Mr.  Goethe ;  else  could  it  be  credited 
that  the  most  obtuse  of  old  libertines  could  put  into 
the  mouth  of  a  young  unmarried  woman,  designed  for 
ft  model  of  propriety  and  good  sense,  as  fit  matter  for 
her  very  earliest  communication  with  a  young  man,  the 
secret   history  of  her  own  mother's  *"  adulterous   in* 


"WILHELM   MEISTEK."  461 

Irigues  ?  Adultery,  by  way  of  displaying  her  -s  irgin 
modesty :  her  mother's  adultery  in  testimony  of  her  filia, 
piety !  So  it  is,  however  :  and  with  a  single  "  alas  !  that 
I  should  have  so  to  say  of  my  mother  "  (p.  41),  given  to 
the  regrets  and  the  delicacies  of  the  case,  this  intrepid 
Amazon  proceeds  to  tell  how  her  father  was  "  a 
wealthy  noble,"  "a  tender  father,  and  an  upright 
friend ;  an  excellent  economist"  who  had  "  but  one 
fault ; "  and  what  was  that  ?  "  he  v/as  too  compliant  to 
a  wife  whose  nature  was  the  opposite  of  his."  Then 
she  goes  on  to  say  how  this  wife  could  not  endure 
women  —  no,  not  her  own  daughter  even,  and  therefore 
surrounded  herself  with  men,  who  joined  her  in  acting 
plays  on  a  private  stage  :  how  "  it  was  easy  to  perceive 
that,"  even  amongst  the  men,  "  she  did  not  look  on  all 
alike  ;  "  how  she,  the  daughter,  "  gave  sharper  heed  ; " 
made  sundry  discoveries  ;  "  held  her  tongue,  however," 
until  the  servants,  whom  she  "  was  used  to  watch  like 
a  falcon  "  (p.  47,  iii.),  presuming  upon  the  mother's 
conduct,  began  to  "  despise  the  father's  regulations  ;  " 
upon  which  she  discovered  all  to  that  person ;  who  an- 
swered however  with  a  smile  "  Good  girl !  I  know  it 
all ;  be  quiet,  bear  it  patiently  ; "  which  doctrine  she 
iisapproved:  how  at  length  her  mother's  extravagance 
"  occasioned  many  a  conference  between  her  parents  ;  " 
but  "  for  a  long  time  the  evil  was  not  helped,  until  at 
last  the  passions  of  her  mother  brought  the  business  to 
A  head."  "  Her  first  gallant,"  it  seems  ("  first "  by  the 
way  —  in  what  sense  ?  In  order  of  time,  or  of  favor  ?) 
"  became  unfaithful  in  a  glaring  manner  ; "  upon  which 
her  conduct  took  so  capricious  an  air,  that  some  sort 
•ii  arrangement  was  made,  in  virtue  of  which  she  con 


462  "  WILUELM    MEI8TER.* 

•ented,  for  "  a  considerable  sum  "  of  money,  to  travei 
for  the  benefit  of  her  passions  to  the  south  of  France. 
And  so  the  tale  proceeds  :  for  what  end  let  us  ask  Mr. 
Goethe,  which  could  not  have  been  as  well  answered 
by  any  other  of  ten  thousand  expedients,  as  by  this 
monstrous  outrage  upon  filial  affection,  virgin  modesty, 
or  (to  i)ut  it  on  the  lowest  ground)  upon  mere  sexual 
pride ;  which  alone  in  any  place  on  this  earth  except 
"  under  a  German  tree  "  would  surely  have  been  suffi- 
cient to  restrain  a  female  from  such  an  exposure  of 
female  frailty  ?  Indeed,  if  we  come  to  that,  for  what 
end  that  needed  to  be  answered  at  all  ?  Notice  this, 
reader ;  for  the  fair  inference  is  —  that  all  this  volun- 
teer exposure  of  her  mother's  depravity,  dei'vered  by 
a  young  "  German  maiden  "  dressed  in  men's  Jothes 
to  a  strolling  player  whom  she  had  never  seen  or  heard 
of  before,  is  introduced  as  an  episode  that  needs  no 
other  justification  than  its  own  inherent  attractions. 

We  are  disposed  to  have  done  with  this  young  lady. 
Yet  there  is  one  circumstance  about  her,  which  to  our 
English  notions  appears  so  truly  comic  that  before  we 
dismiss  her  we  shall  advert  to  it.  Many  years  ago 
there  was  a  crim.  con.  case  brought  into  the  English 
courts,  in  the  course  of  which  the  love-letters  of  the 
noble  marquis,  heir  to  a  dukedom,  were  produced,  read, 
and  of  course  published  in  all  the  newspapers.  The 
matter,  the  "  subject-matter  "  (as  grave  men  say),  of 
such  epistles  can  generally  be  guessed  at  even  by  per 
sons  not  destined  to  set  the  Thames  on  fire.  How 
great  then  was  the  astonishment  and  diversion  of  the 
public  on  finding  that  the  staple  article  in  these  tender 
communications  was  the  price  of  oats  at  Oxford !    W« 


"WILHELM   MEISTER."  468 

were  at  Oxford  during  the  time  ;  and  well  remember 
the  astonishment  of  the  Corn-market  on  finding  that 
any  part  of  their  proceedings,  that  an  unexceptionable 
price  current  of  Oxon  grain,  could  by  possibility  have 
found  its  way  into  the  billets-deux  of  an  enamoured 
patrician.  *'  Feed  oats,  40s.  Potato  oats,  same  as  per 
last:  tick  beans  looking  up."  Undoubtedly,  "  Oats 
is  riz "  cannot  be  denied  to  be  a  just  and  laudable 
communication  to  and  from  certain  quarters,  especially 
grooms  and  hostlers  :  but  it  struck  the  English  public  as 
not  the  appropriate  basis  for  a  lover's  correspondence. 
From  this  opinion,  however,  Mr.  Goethe  evidently  dis- 
sents :  for  the  whole  sentiment  of  Theresa's  character 
and  situation  is  built  upon  the  solid  base  of  tare  and 
tret,  alligation,  rebate,  and  "  such  branches  of  learning." 
All  this  she  had  probably  learned  from  her  father,  who 
(as  we  know)  was  a  great  "economist,"  and  in  the 
household  of  a  neighboring  lady  whom  she  had  "  as- 
sisted in  struggling  with  her  steward  and  domestics " 
(masters  and  servants,  by  the  way,  appear  to  be  viewed 
Dy  Goethe  as  necessary  belligerents).  Economy  at  all 
events  is  the  basis  of  her  amatory  correspondence ; 
'  our  conversation,  says  she  (speaking  of  her  lover),  al- 
ways in  the  end  grew  economical "  (p.  58),  and  from 
ciousehold  economy  her  lover  drew  her  on  by  tender 
and  seductive  insinuations  to  political  economy.  Sen- 
timental creatures !  what  a  delicate  transition  from 
"  tallow  "  and  "  raw  hides  "  to  the  "  bullion  question," 
"  circulating  medium,"  and  the  "  Exchequer  Bills'  bill." 
The  Malthusian  view  of  population,  we  suppose,  would 
be  rather  an  unwelcome  topic ;  not  however  on  the 
aoore  of  delicacy,  as  the  reader  will  see  by  the  follow- 


1:64  "WILHELM    MEISTEU." 

mg  account  from  tbe  economic  lady  herself  of  the  way 
in  which  she  contrived  to  introduce  herself  in  an  eco- 
nomic phasis  to  her  economic  lover.  It  surpasses  the 
Oxford  price-current.  "  The  greatest  service  which  I 
did  my  benefactress,  was  in  bringing  into  order  the 
extensive  forests  which  belonged  to  her.  In  this  pre- 
cious property  matters  still  went  on  according  to  the 
old  routine  ;  without  regularity,  without  plan  ;  no  end 
to  theft  and  fraud.  Many  hills  were  standing  bare  ;  an 
equal  growth  was  nowhere  to  be  found  but  in  the  oldest 
cuttings.  I  personally  visited  the  whole  of  them  with 
an  experienced  forester.  I  got  the  woods  correctly 
measured :  I  set  men  to  hew,  to  sow  "  (not  sew,  reader, 
don't  mistake  Theresa),  "  to  sow,  to  plant.  That  I 
might  mount  more  readily  on  horseback,  and  also  walk 
on  foot  with  less  obstruction,  I  had  a  suit  of  men's 
clothes  made  for  me :  I  was  in  many  places,  I  was  feared 
in  all. 

"  Hearing  that  our  young  friends  with  Lothario  were 
uurposing  to  have  another  hunt,  it  came  into  my  head 
;br  the  first  time  in  my  life  to  make  a  figure ;  or,  that 
I  may  not  do  myself  injustice,  to  pass  in  the  eyes  of 
this  noble  gentleman  for  what  I  was.  I  put  on  my 
man's  clothes,  took  my  gun  upon  my  shoulder,  and 
went  forward  with  our  hunters,  to  await  the  party  on 
our  marches.  They  came :  Lothario  did  not  know 
me :  a  nephew  of  the  lady's  introduced  me  to  him  as 
a  clever  forester ;  joked  about  my  youth,  and  carried 
on  his  jesting  in  my  praise,  until  at  last  Lothario  rec- 
ognized me.  The  nephew  seconded  my  project,  as  if 
we  had •  concocted  it  together"  (concocted!  what  a 
word  !)    "  He  circumstantially  and  gratefully  described 


"  WILHELM    MEI8TER."  466 

irhat  I  had  done  for  the  estates  of  his  aunt,  and  conse- 
quently for  himself." 

Now  at  this  point,  laying  all  things  together,  —  the 
male  attire,  the  gun,  the  forest,  and  the  ominous  name 
of  the  lover,  —  we  are  afraid  that  the  reader  ia  looking 
to  hear  of  something  not  quite  correct ;  that  in  short 
he  is  anticipating  some 

*'  Speluncam  Dido  dux  et  Trojanus  eandem  deveniunt." 

0  fie !  reader.  How  can  you  have  such  reprehen- 
sible thoughts  ?  Nothing  of  the  kind  :  No,  no  :  we 
are  happy  to  contradict  such  scandal,  and  to  assure  the 
public  that  nothing  took  place  but  was  perfectly  "  ac- 
curate "  and  as  it  should  be.  The  whole  went  off  in  a 
blaze  of  Political  Economy,  which  we  doubt  not  would 
have  had  even  Mr.  Ricardo's  approbation.  The  follow- 
ing is  Mr.  Goethe's  report,  which  may  be  looked  upon 
as  official. 

"  Lothario  listened  with  attention  ;  he  talked  with 
me  ;  inquired  concerning  all  particulars  of  the  estates 
and  district.  I  submitted  certain  projects  of  improve- 
ments to  him,  which  he  sanctioned ;  telling  me  of  sim- 
ilar examples,  and  strengthening  my  arguments  by  the 
connection  which  he  gave  them.  My  satisfaction  grew 
more  perfect  every  moment.  From  that  day  he  showed 
a  true  respect  for  me,  a  fine  trust  in  me :  in  company 
Ve  usually  spoke  to  me ;  asked  for  my  opinion  ;  and 
appeared  to  be  persuaded  that,  in  household  matters, 
nothing  was  unknown  to  me.  His  sympathy  excited 
me  extremely :  even  when  the  conversation  was  of 
general  finance  and  political  economy  he  used  to  lead 
vie  to  take  a  part  in  it" 

.30 


466  "  WILHKLM    MEISTKR." 

We  are  loath  to  part  with  this  most  amusing  Theresa , 
she  is  a  political  economist,  and  so  are  we ;  naturally 
therefore  we  love  her.  We  recite  one  more  anecdote 
about  her,  and  so  leave  the  reader  con  la  bocca  dolce 
The  reader  has  heard  of  the  proud  but  poor  Gascon 
who  was  overheard  calling  to  his  son  at  night  —  "  Chev- 
alier, as-tu  donne  au  cochon  a  raanger  ?  "  Some  such 
little  household  meditation  furnishes  the  sentiment  with 
which  Theresa  clenches  one  of  her  tenderest  scenes. 
She  has  been  confiding  her  history,  her  woes,  and  her 
despondency,  to  "  our  friend  ;  "  and  had  indeed  "  as  the 
sun  went  down  "  (milking  time),  "  both  her  fine  eyes," 
we  need  not  say,  "  filled  with  tears."  Such  is  the 
scene  ;  and  thus  it  is  wound  up  :  "  Theresa  spoke  not ; 
she  laid  her  hand  upon  her  new  friend's  hands ;  he 
kissed  it  with  emotion ;  she  dried  her  tears  and  rose. 
*Let  us  return,  and  see  that  all  is  riffht-,'  said  she." 
All  right !  all  right  behind  !  Chevalier,  as-tu  donne  au 
cochon  a  manger  ? 

Aurelia.  —  This  lady  is  not,  like  Theresa,  a  "  Ger- 
man maiden,"  for,  indeed,  she  is  not  a  maiden  at  all ; 
neither  has  she  a  "  German  tree "  to  stand  under ; 
but,  for  all  that,  she  is  quite  as  well  disposed  to  tell 
her  German  story  in  a  German  way.  Let  her  speak 
for  herself:  "My  friend,"  says  she  to  "our  friend,"* 
"  it  is  V)ut  a  few  minutes  since  we  saw  each  other  first, 
and  already  you  are  going  to  become  my  confidant " 
(p.  78).  Not  as  though  he  has  offered  to  be  so  :  noth- 
ing of  the  sort:  but  she  is  resolved  he  shall  be  so. 
What  determinate  kindness  !  What  resolute  liberality 
For  this  time,  however,  her  liberality  is  balked  ;  for  in 
bounces  the  philanthropic  Philina ;  interrupts  Aurelia 


"  WILHELM   MEISTER."  467 

and.  upon  that  lady's  leaving  the  room,  tells  her  story 
for  her  in  the  following  elegant  (though  not  quite  ac- 
curate) terms  :  "  Pretty  things  are  going  on  here,  just 
of  the  sort  I  like.  Aurelia  has  had  a  hapless  love-affair 
with  some  nobleman,  who  seems  to  be  a  very  stately  per- 
son, one  that  I  myself  could  like  to  see  some  day.  lie 
has  left  her  a  memorial,  or  I  much  mistake.  There  is  a 
boy  running  over  the  house,  of  three  years  old  or  thereby 
{i.  e.,  thereabouts)  ;  the  papa  must  be  a  very  pretty 
fellow.  Commonly  I  cannot  suffer  children,  but  this 
brat  quite  delights  me.  I  have  calculated  Aurelia's 
business.  The  death  of  her  husband,  the  new  acquaint- 
ance, the  child's  age,  all  things  agree.  But  now  her 
spark  has  gone  his  ways ;  for  a  year  she  has  not  seen 
a  glimpse  of  him.  She  is  beside  herself  and  inconsol- 
able for  this.  The  more  fool  she  !  "  From  Aurelia 
she  passes  to  Aurelia's  brother ;  and,  though  it  is  di- 
gressing a  little,  we  must  communicate  her  little  me- 
moir of  this  gentleman's  "  passions  ;  "  for  naturally  he 
has  his  passions  as  well  as  other  people ;  every  gentle- 
man has  a  right  to  his  passions  ;  say,  a  couple  of  pas- 
sions, or  "  thereby,"  to  use  the  translator's  phrase  :  but 
Mr.  Serlo,  the  gentleman  in  question,  is  really  un- 
reasonable, as  the  muster-roll  will  show  ;  the  reader 
will  be  so  good  as  to  keep  count.  "  Her  brother," 
proceeds  the  frank-hearted  Philina,  "  has  a  dancing 
girl  among  his  troop,  with  whom  he  stands  on  pretty 
«erms  "  {one)  ;  "  an  actress  to  whom  he  is  betrothed  " 
{two)  ;  "  in  the  town  some  other  women  whom  he 
courts  "  (women,  observe,  accusative  plural ;  that  must 
4t  least  make  three,four,Jive)  ;  "  I,  too,  am  on  his  list " 
•iz).    "  The  more  fool  he ! '  Of  the  rest  thou  shalt 


468  "  WILHELM    MEISTER." 

hear  to-morrow."  Verily,  this  Mr.  Serlo  has  laid  in  a 
pretty  fair  winter's  provision  for  his  "  passions  ! "  The 
loving  speaker  concludes  with  informing  Wilhelm  that 
she,  Philina,  has  for  her  part  fallen  in  love  with  him- 
self; begs  him,  however,  to  fall  in  love  with  Aurelia, 
because  in  that  case  "  the  chase  would  be  worth  be- 
holding. She  (that  is,  Aurelia)  pursues  her  faithless 
swain,  thou  her,  I  thee,  her  brother  me."  Certainly 
an  ingenious  design  for  a  reel  of  eight  even  in  merry 
England ;  but  what  would  it  be  then  in  Germany, 
where  each  man  might  (as  we  know  by  Wilhelm,  etc.) 
pursue  all  the  four  women  at  once,  and  be  pursued  by 
as  many  of  the  four  as  thought  fit.  Our  English  brains 
whirl  at  the  thought  of  the  cycles  and  epicycles,  the 
vortices,  the  osculating  curves,  they  would  describe  ; 
what  a  practical  commentary  on  the  doctrine  of  com- 
binations and  permutations !  What  a  lesson  to  Eng- 
lish bell-ringers  on  the  art  of  ringing  changes !  what 
"  triple  bobs  "  and  "  bob  majors  "  would  result !  What 
a  kaleidoscope  to  look  into !  O  ye  deities,  that  preside 
over  men's  Sides,  protect  all  Christian  ones  from  the 
siege  of  inextinguishable  laughter  which  threatens 
them  at  this  spectacle  of  eight  heavy  High  German 
lovers  engaged  in  this  amorous  "  barley-break  !  "  ^ 

To  recover  our  gravity,  let  us  return  to  Aurelia's 
story  which  she  tells  herself  to  Wilhelm.  Not  having, 
like  a  Theresa,  any  family  adulteries  to  record  in  the 
jneal,  she  seeks  them  in  the  collateral  branches ;  and 
instead  of  her  mother's  intrigues,  recites  her  aunt's,  who 
"  resigned  herself  headlong  to  every  impulse."  There 
is  a  description  of  this  lady's  paramours,  retiring  from 
ler  society,  which  it  is  absolutely  impossible  to  quote^ 


"WILHELM   MEISTEB."  46^ 

Quitting  lier  aunt's  intrigues,  she  comes  to  one  of  hei 
own.  But  we  have  had  too  much  of  such  matter  ;  and 
of  this  we  shall  notice  only  one  circumstance  of  hor- 
rible aggravation,  viz.,  the  particular  situation  in 
which  it  commenced.  This  we  state  in  the  words  of 
the  translation  :  "  My  husband  grew  sick,  his  strength 
was  visibly  decaying;  anxiety  for  him  interrupted  my 
general  indifference.  It  was  at  this  time  that  I  formed 
an  acquaintance  (viz.,  with  Lothario)  which  opened 
up  a  new  life  for  me  ;  a  new  and  quicker  one,  for  i* 
will  soon  be  done."  ....  One  other  part  of  this  lady's 
conduct  merits  notice  for  its  exquisite  Germanity  :  most 
strikingly  and  cuttingly,  it  shows  what  difference  a  few 
score  leagues  will  make  in  the  moral  quality  of  actions  • 
that,  which  in  Germany  is  but  the  characteristic  act  of 
a  high-minded  sentimentalist,  would  in  England  bring 
the  party  within  the  cutting  and  maiming  act.  The 
case  is  this.  Mr.  Meister,  at  the  close  of  her  story 
volunteers  a  vow,  for  no  reason  that  we  can  see  but 
that  he  may  have  the  pleasure  of  breaking  it ;  which 
he  does.  "  Accept  a  vow,"  says  he,  as  if  it  had  been  a 
peach.  "  I  accept  it,  said  she,  and  made  a  movemen* 
idth  her  right  hand,  as  if  meaning  to  take  hold  of  his, 
but  instantly  she  darted  it  into  her  pocket,  pulled  out 
her  dagger  as  quick  as  lightning,  and  scored  with  the 
edge  and  point  of  it  across  his  hand.  He  hastily  drew 
V>ack  his  arm  "  (Meister,  German  Meister  even,  does 
not  like  this)  ;  "  but  the  blood  was  already  running* 
down.  One  must  mark  you  men  rather  sharply,  if 
one  means  you  to  take  need,  cried  she."  .  .  .  .  "  She 
ran  to  her  drawer ;  bronght  lint  with  other  apparatus  ; 
ttanched  the  blood ;  and  viewed  the  wound  attentively 


470  "  WILIIF.hM    MKI8TKR.*' 

Tt  went  across  the  palm,  close  under  the  thumb,  dividing 
the  life-lines,  and  running  towards  the  little  finger.  She 
bound  it  up  in  silence  with  a  significant  reflective 
look." 

Mignon.  —  The  situation  or  character,  one  or  both, 
of  this  young  person,  is  relied  upon  by  all  the  admirers 
of  Goethe  as  the  most  brilliant  achievement  of  his 
poetic  powers.  We,  on  our  part,  are  no  less  ready  to 
take  our  stand  on  this  as  the  most  unequivocal  evidence 
of  depraved  taste  and  defective  sensibility.  The 
reader  might  in  this  instance  judge  for  himself  with 
very  little  waste  of  time,  if  he  were  to  mark  the  mar- 
gin of  those  paragraphs  in  which  the  name  of  Mignon 
occurs,  and  to  read  them  detached  from  all  the  rest. 
An  odd  way,  we  admit,  of  examining  a  work  of  any 
art,  if  it  were  really  composed  on  just  principles  of 
art ;  and  the  inference  is  pretty  plain,  where  such  an 
insulation  is  possible ;  which,  in  the  case  of  Mignon, 
it  is.  The  translator,  indeed,  is  bound  to  think  not ; 
for  with  a  peculiar  infelicity  of  judgment  natural 
enough  to  a  critic  who  writes  in  the  character  of  a 
eulogist,  he  says  of  this  person,  that  "  her  history  runs 
like  a  thread  of  gold  through  the  tissue  of  the  narra- 
tive, connecting  with  the  heart  much  that  were  else 
addressed  only  to  the  head."  But  a  glittering  meta- 
phor is  always  suspicious  in  criticism  ;  in  this  case  it 
Bhould  naturally  imply  that  Mignon  in  some  way  or 
other  modifies  the  action  and  actors  of  the  piece.  Now, 
It  is  certain  that  never  was  there  a  character  in  drama 
or  in  novel  on  which  any  stress  was  laid,  which  so  lit- 
tle influenced  the  movement  of  the  story.  Nothing  is 
•ither  hastened  or  retarded  by  Mignon  ;  she  neithe? 


"  WILUEI.M    MKISTER."  471 

ECts  nor  is  acted  upon  ;  and  we  challenge  the  critic  t« 
point  to  any  incident  or  situation  of  interest  which 
would  not  remain  uninjured  though  Mignon  were 
wholly  removed  from  the  story.  So  removable  a  per- 
son can  hardly  be  a  connecting  thread  of  gold ;  unless, 
indeed,  under  the  notion  of  a  thread  which  everywhere 
betrays,  by  difference  of  color  or  substance,  its  refusal 
to  blend  with  the  surrounding  tissue  ;  a  notion  which 
is  far  from  the  meaning  of  the  critic.  But  without 
dwelling  on  this  objection  ;  the  relation  of  Mignon  to 
the  other  characters  and  the  series  of  the  incidents  is 
none  at  all ;  but,  waiving  this,  let  us  examine  her  char- 
acter and  her  situation  each  for  itself,  and  not  as  any 
part  of  a  novel.  The  character  in  this  case,  if  Mignon 
can  be  said  to  have  one,  arises  out  of  the  situation. 
And  what  is  that  ?  For  the  information  of  the  reader, 
we  shall  state  it  as  accurately  as  possible.  First  of 
all,  Mignon  is  the  offspring  of  an  incestuous  connection 
between  a  brother  and  sister.  Here  let  us  pause  one 
moment  to  point  the  reader's  attention  to  Mr.  Goethe, 
who  is  now  at  his  old  tricks  ;  never  relying  on  the 
grand  high  road  sensibilities  of  human  nature,  but 
always  travelling  into  by-paths  of  unnatural  or  unhal- 
lowed interest.  Suicide,  adultery,  incest,  monstrous 
situations,  or  manifestations  of  supernatural  power, 
are  the  stimulants  to  which  he  constantly  resorts  in 
order  to  rouse  his  own  feelings,  originally  feeble,  and, 
long  before  the  date  of  this  work,  grown  torpid  from 
artificial  excitement.  In  the  case  before  us,  what  pur- 
pose is  answered  by  the  use  of  an  expedient,  the  very 
"jame  of  which  is  terrific  and  appalling  to  men  of  aU 
nations,  habits,  and  religions?     What  comes  of  it? 


472  "  WII.IIKLM    MEISTEIt." 

What  use,  what  result  can  be  pleaded  to  justify  the  tam- 
pering with  such  tremendous  agencies  ?  The  father  oi 
Mignon,  it  may  be  answered,  goes  mad.  He  does ;  but 
is  a  madness,  such  as  his,  a  justifying  occasion  for  such 
an  adjuration  ;  is  this  a  dignus  vindice  nodus  ?  a  mad- 
ness which  is  mere  senile  dotage  and  fatuity,  pure  child- 
ish imbecility,  without  passion,  without  dignity,  and 
characterized  by  no  one  feeling  but  such  as  is  base  and 
selfish,  viz.,  a  clinging  to  life,  and  an  inexplicable  dread 
of  little  hoys!  A  state  so  mean  might  surely  have 
arisen  from  some  cause  less  awful ;  and  we  must  add 
that  a  state  so  capriciously  and  fantastically  conceived, 
so  little  arising  out  of  any  determinate  case  of  passion, 
or  capable  of  expressing  any  case  of  passion  as  its  nat- 
ural language,  is  to  be  justified  only  by  a  downright 
affidavit  to  the  facts,  and  is  not  a  proper  object  for  the 
contemplation  of  a  poet,  we  submit.  Madhouses 
doubtless  furnish  many  cases  of  fatuity,  no  less  eccen- 
tric and  to  all  appearance  arbitrary  ;  as  fiicts,  as  known 
realities,  they  do  not  on  this  account  cease  to  be  affect- 
ing ;  but  as  poetic  creations,  which  must  include  their 
own  law,  they  become  unintelligible  and  monstrous. 
Besides,  we  are  conceding  too  much  to  Mr.  Goethe; 
the  fatuity  of  the  old  man  is  nowhere  connected  with 
the  unhappy  circumstances  of  his  previous  life;  on  the 
whole  it  seems  to  be  the  product  of  mere  constitutional 
weakness  of  brain,  or  probably  is  a  liver  case ;  for  he 
is  put  under  the  care  of  a  mad  doctor  ;  and,  by  the 
help  chiefly  of  a  course  of  newspapers,  he  begins  to  re- 
cover ;  and  finally  he  recovers  altogether  by  one  of  the 
oddest  prescriptions  in  the  world ;  he  puts  a  glassfuJ 
of  laudanum  into  a  "  firm,  little,  ground-glass  phial ; ' 


"  WILHELM    MKISTEU."  47> 

of  this,  however,  he  never  drinks,  but  simply  keeps 
it  in  his  pocket ;  and  the  consciousness  that  he  car- 
ries suicide  in  his  waistcoat  pocket  reconciles  him  to 
life,  and  puts  the  finishing  hand  to  the  "  recovery  of 
his  reason  "  (p.  274).  With  such  a  pocket  companion 
about  him,  the  reader  would  swear  now  that  this  old 
gentleman,  if  he  must  absolutely  commit  suicide  for 
the  good  of  the  novel,  will  die  by  laudanum.  Why 
else  have  we  so  circumstantial  an  account  of  the 
"  ground-glass  phial,"  drawn  up  as  if  by  some  great 
auctioneer,  —  Christie  or  Squibb, — for  some  great 
catalogue  ("  No.  so  and  so,  one  firm,  little,  ground- 
glass  phial  ").  But  no  ;  he  who  is  born  to  be  hanged 
will  never  be  drowned ;  and  the  latter  end  of  the  old  half- 
wit is  as  follows:  being  discharged  as  cured  (or  incur- 
able) he  one  day  enters  a  nobleman's  house,  where  by 
the  way  he  had  no  sort  of  introduction  ;  in  this  house, 
as  it  happens.  Wilhelm  Meister  is  a  visitor,  and  has 
some  difficulty  in  recognizing  his  former  friend  "  an 
old  harper  with  a  long  beard  "  in  a  young  gentleman 
who  is  practising  as  a  dandy  in  an  early  stage.  Goethe 
has  an  irresistible  propensity  to  freeze  his  own  at- 
tempts at  the  pathetic  by  a  blighting  air  of  the  ludi- 
crous. Accordingly  in  the  present  case  he  introduces 
flis  man  of  woe  as  "  cleanly  and  genteelly  dressed :  " 
"  beard  vanished  ;  ^  hair  dressed  with  some  attention 
to  the  mode:  and  in  his  countenance  the  look  of  age  no 
longer  to  he  seen."  This  last  item  certainly  is  as  won- 
drous as  Mr.  Coleridge's  reading  fly  ;  and  we  suspect 
that  the  old  ^son,  who  had  thus  recovered  his  juve- 
nility, deceived  himself  when  he  fancied  that  he  car- 
ried his  laudanum  as  a  mere  reversionary  friend  who 


474  "WILHELM   MEISTER." 

held  a  sinecure  in  his  waistcoat  pocket ;  thai  in  fact 
he  must  have  drunk  of  it  "  pretty  considerably."  Be 
that  as  it  may,  at  his  first  debut  he  behaves  decently; 
rather  dull  he  is,  perhaps,  but  rational,  "  cleanly,"  pc 
lite,  and  (we  are  happy  to  state)  able  to  face  any  liltle 
boy,  the  most  determined  that  ever  carried  pop-gun. 
But  such  heroism  conld  not  be  expected  to  last  for- 
ever; soon  after  he  finds  a  MS.  which  contains  an 
account  of  his  own  life  ;  and  upon  reading  it  he  pre- 
pares for  suicide.  And  let  us  prepare  also,  as  short- 
hand writers  to  a  genuine  Gkrman  Suicidk  !  In  such 
a  case,  now,  if  the  novel  were  an  English  novel,  sup- 
posing, for  instance,  of  our  composition,  who  are  Eng- 
lish reviewers,  or  of  our  reader's  composition  (who 
are  probably  English  readers)  ;  if  then  we  were  re- 
duced to  the  painful  necessity  of  inflicting  capital  pun- 
ishment upon  one  or  two  of  our  characters  (as  surely 
in  our  own  novel,  where  all  the  people  are  our  own 
creatures,  we  have  the  clearest  right  to  put  all  of  them 
to  death)  ;  matters,  we  say,  being  come  to  that  pass 
that  we  were  called  on  to  make  an  example  of  a  muti- 
neer or  two,  and  it  were  fully  agreed  that  the  thing 
must  be ;  we  should  cause  them  to  take  their  laudanum, 
or  their  rifle  bullet,  as  the  case  might  be,  and  die 
^^  sans  phrase ;  "  die  (as  our  friend  "the  Dramatist" 

says)  :  — 

"Die  nobly,  die  like  demigods." 

Not  80  our  German:  he  takes  the  matter  more 
tooUy  ;  and  dies  more  transcendentally ;  "  by  cold  gra- 
dation and  well  balanced  form."  First  of  all,  he  became 
•onvinced  that  it  was  now  "  impossible  for  him  to 
•ve ; "  that  is  tlie  idea  struck  him  in  the  way  of  a 


••WILHKLM    MEISTER."  475 

theory :  it  was  a  new  idea,  a  German  idea,  and  he  was 
pleased  with  it.  Next  he  considered  that,  as  lie  de- 
signed to  depart  his  life  "  se  ofFendendo,"  "  Argal  "  if 
the  water  would  not  come  to  hira  he  must  look  out  for 
the  water ;  so  he  pulls  out  the  "  ground-glass  phial," 
and  pours  out  his  laudanum  into  a  glass  of  "  almond 
milk."  Almond  milk  !  Was  there  ever  such  a  Ger- 
man blunder  !  But  to  proceed  :  having  mixed  his  po- 
tion, a  potion  unknown  to  all  the  pharmacopceias  in 
Christendom,  "  he  raised  it  to  his  mouth  ;  but  he  shud- 
dered when  it  reached  his  lips;  he  set  it  down  untasted; 
went  out  to  walk  once  more  across  the  garden,"  &c. 
(p.  284).  0  fie,  fie !  Mr.  Mignonette  !  ^  this  is  sad 
work :  "  walking  across  the  garden,"  and  "  shudder- 
ing," and  "  doing  nothing,"  as  Macmorris  (''  Henry  V.") 
says,  "  when  by  Chrish  there  is  work  to  be  done,  and 
throats  to  be  cut."  He  returns  from  the  garden,  and  is 
balked  in  his  purpose  by  a  scene  too  ludicrous  to  men- 
tion amongst  such  tender  and  affecting  matter ;  and 
thus  for  one  day  he  gets  a  reprieve.  Now  this  is  what 
we  call  false  mercy  :  well  knowing  that  his  man  was  to 
die,  why  should  Mr.  G.  keep  him  lingering  in  this 
absurd  way?  Such  a  line  of  conduct  shall  have  no 
countenance  in  any  novel  that  we  may  write.  Once 
let  a  man  of  ours  be  condemned,  and  if  he  won't  drink 
off  his  laudanum,  then  as  Bernardine  says,  ("  Measure 
for  Measure  ")  we  will "  beat  out  his  brains  with  billets," 
but  he  shall  die  that  same  day,  without  further  trouble 
to  ourselves,  or  our  readers.  Now,  on  the  contrary, 
Mr.  Mignonette  takes  three  days  in  dying:  within 
which  term  we  are  bold  to  say  that  any  reasonable  man 
vould  have  been  sat  upon  by  the  coroner,  buried,  ud- 


476  "  WILHELM    MEISTER." 

buried  by  the  resurrection-man,  and  demonstrated  npon 
by  the  anatomical  Professor.  "Well,  to  proceed  with 
this  long  concern  of  Mr.  Mignonette's  suicide,  which 
travels  as  slowly  as  a  Chancery  suit  or  as  the  York 
coach  in  Charles  II.'s  reign  (note:  this  coach  took 
fourteen  days  between  York  and  London,  vide  Eden's 
"State  of  the  Poor").  To  proceed,  we  say:  on  the 
second  day,  Mr.  Mignonette  cut  his  own  throat  with  his 
own  razor  :  and  that,  you  will  say,  was  doing  something 
towards  the  object  we  all  have  in  view.  It  was ;  at 
least  it  might  seem  so  ;  but  there  's  no  trusting  to  ap- 
pearances ;  it 's  not  every  man  that  will  die  because  his 
throat  is  cut :  a  Cambridge  man  of  this  day  ®°  ("  Diary 
of  an  Invalid  ")  saw  a  man  at  Rome,  who.  or  whose  head 
rather,  continued  to  express  various  sentiments  through 
his  eyes  after  he  (or  his  head)  had  been  entirely  am- 
putated from  him  (or  his  body).  By  th3  way  this  man 
might  have  some  little  headache  perhaps,  but  he  must 
have  been  charmingly  free  from  indigestion.  But  this 
is  digressing :  to  return  to  Mr.  Mignonette.  In  con- 
versing with  a  friend  upon  his  case,  we  took  a  bet  that, 
for  all  his  throat  was  cut,  he  would  talk  again,  and  talk 
very  well  too.  Our  friend  conceived  the  thing  to  be 
impossible  ;  but  he  knew  nothing  of  German.  "  It 
cannoi  be,"  said  he,  "for  when  the  larynx  —  "  "Ay, 
bless  your  heart !"  we  interrupted  him,  "but  in  this 
case  the  larynx  of  the  party  was  a  German  larynx." 
However,  to  go  on  with  Mr.  Mignonette's  suicide.  Hia 
throat  is  cut ;  and  still,  as  Macmorris  would  be  con- 
founded to  hear,  "  by  Chrish  there  is  nothing  done : " 
for  a  doctor  mends  it  again  (p.  283),  and  at  p.  284  we 
frin  our  bet ;  for  he  talks  as  well  as  ever  he  did  in  his 


"WILHELM   MEISTER."  477 

.ife  ;  only  we  are  concerned  to  say  that  his  fear  of  little 
boys  returns.  But  still  he  talks  down  to  the  very  last 
line  of  p.  284 ;  in  which  line,  by  the  way,  is  the  very 
last  word  he  is  known  to  have  uttered  ;  and  that  is 
"  glass  ; "  not  however,  that  well-known  unexception- 
able "  firm  little  ground-glass  phial,"  but  another  which 
had  less  right  to  his  dying  recollections.  Now  then, 
having  heard  the  "  last  word  of  dying  Mignonette," 
the  reader  fondly  conceives  that  certainly  Mignonette 
is  dead.  Mit  nichien,  as  they  say  in  Germany,  by  no 
means ;  Mignonette  is  not  dead,  nor  like  to  be  for  ona 
day ;  nor  perhaps  would  he  have  been  dead  at  this  mo- 
ment if  he  had  not  been  a  German  Mignonette;  being 
BO,  however,  the  whole  benefit  of  a  German  throat  is  de- 
feated. His  throat  is  mended  by  the  surgeon  ;  but  hav- 
ing once  conceived  a  German  theory  that  it  was  impos- 
sible for  him  to  live,  although  he  is  so  composed  as  to 
relate  his  own  theory  and  the  incident  which  caused  it, 
he  undoes  all  the  doctor  has  done,  tears  away  the  band- 
ages, and  bleeds  to  death.  This  event  is  ascertained  on 
the  morning  after  he  had  uttered  his  last  word  "glass;" 
the  brittle  glass  of  Mignonette's  life  is  at  length  broken 
past  even  a  German  skill  to  repair  it ;  and  Mignonette  is 
dead, —  dead  as  a  door  nail,  we  believe ;  though  we  have 
Btill  some  doubts  whether  he  will  not  again  be  mended 
and  reappear  in  some  future  novel ;  our  reason  for 
which  is  not  merely  his  extreme  tenacity  of  life,  which 
is  like  that  of  a  tortoise,  but  also  because  we  observe 
that  though  he  is  said  to  be  dead,  he  is  not  buried  ; 
Qor  does  anybody  take  any  further  notice  of  him  or 
ever  mention  his  name ;  but  all  about  him  fall  to  mar« 
rying  and  giving  in  marriage ;  and  a  few  pages  wind 


478  "  WILHELM   MEISTER." 

ap  the  whole  novel  in  a  grand  bravura  of  kissing  ana 
catch-match-making :  we  have  Mr.  Goethe's  word  for 
it,  however,  that  Mignonette  is  dead,  and  he  ought  to 
know.  But,  be  that  as  it  may,  nothing  is  so  remark- 
able as  the  extreme  length  of  time  which  it  took  to  do 
the  trick:  not  until  "the  third  rosyfingered  morn  ap- 
pears "  (to  speak  Homerically)  is  the  suicide  accom- 
plished ;  three  days  it  took  to  kill  this  old  young  man, 
this  flower,  this  Mignonette :  which  we  take  to  be,  if 
not  the  boldest,  the  longest  suicide  on  record.  And  so 
much  for  Mr.  Mignonette  ;  and  so  much  for  a  German 
suicide.**^ 

HISTORY  OP  MR.  MEISTER'S  "AFFAIRS  OF  THE  HEART." 

First  we  find  him  "  in  love "  (oh  !  dishonored 
phrase !  )  with  Mariana ;  rapturously  in  love,  if  the 
word  of  Mr.  Goethe  were  a  sufficient  guarantee.  Not 
BO,  however.  An  author  may  assert  what  he  will  of 
his  own  creatures  ;  and  as  long  as  he  does  not  himself 
contradict  it  by  the  sentiments,  wishes,  or  conduct 
which  he  attributes  to  them,  we  are  to  take  his  word 
for  it  5  but  no  longer.  We,  who  cannot  condescend  to 
call  by  the  name  of  "  love "  the  fancies  for  a  pretty 
face,  which  vanish  before  a  week's  absence  or  before  a 
face  somewhat  prettier,  still  less  the  appetites  of  a 
selfish  voluptuary,  know  what  to  think  of  Wilhelm's 
passion,  its  depth,  and  its  purity,  when  we  find  (p.  211, 
i.)  "  the  current  of  his  spirits  and  ideas "  stopped  by 
'the  spasm  of  a  sharp  jealousy."  Jealousy  about 
whom  ?  Mariana  ?  No,  but  Philina.  And  by  whom 
excited?  By  the  "boy"  Frederick.  His  jealousy 
was  no  light  one  ;  it  was  "a  fierce  jealousy  "  (p.  221 


"  WILHELM    MEISTER."  479 

I.)  ;  it  caused  him  "  a  general  discomfort,  such  as  he 
had  never  felt  in  his  life  before"  (p.  211,  i.)  ;  and, 
had  not  decency  restrained  him,  he  could  have 
"  crushed  in  pieces  all  the  people  round  him "  (p. 
221,  i.)  Such  a  jealousy,  with  regard  to  Philina, 
is  incompatible,  we  presume,  with  any  real  fervor  of 
love  for  Mariana :  we  are  now  therefore  at  liberty  to 
infer  that  Mariana  is  dethroned,  and  that  Philina 
reigneth  in  her  stead.  Next  he  is  "  in  love  "  with  the 
Countess ;  and  Philina  seldom  appears  to  him  as  an 
object  of  any  other  feelings  than  those  of  contempt. 
Fourthly,  at  p.  45,  ii.,  he  falls  desperately  in  love  with 
"the  Amazon,"  e.  c,  a  young  lady  mounted  on  a  gray 
courser,  and  wrapped  up  in  "  a  man's  white  great-coat." 
His  love  for  this  incognita  holds  on  throughout  the 
work  like  the  standing  bass,  but  not  so  as  to  prevent  a 
running  accompaniment,  in  the  treble,  of  various  other 
"  passions."  And  these  passions  not  merely  succeed 
each  other  with  rapidity,  but  are  often  all  upon  him  at 
once  ;  at  p.  64,  ii.,  "  the  recollection  of  the  amiable 
Countess  is  to  Wilhelm  infinitely  sweet ;  but  anon,  the 
figure  of  the  noble  Amazon  would  step  between ; "  and 
two  pages  fiirther  on  he  is  indulging  in  day-dreams 
that  "  perhaps  Mariana  might  appear,"  or,  "  above  all, 
the  beauty  whom  he  worshipped  "  (^.  e.,  the  Amazon). 
Here,  therefore,  there  is  a  sort  of  glee  for  three  voices 
between  the  Countess,  Mariana,  and  the  Amazon. 
Fifthly,  he  is  in  love  with  Theresa,  the  other  Amazon. 
And  this  love  is  no  joke  ;  for  at  p.  134,  iii.,  meditating 
upon  "  her  great  virtues  "  (and  we  will  add,  her  politi- 
cal economy)  he  writes  a  letter  offering  her  his  hand  5 
And  at  this  time  (what  time  ?  why,  post  time  to  be  sure) 


480  "  WILHELM   MEISTER." 

•'his  resolution  was  so  firm,  and  the  business  was  ol 
such  importance  "  that,  lest  Major  Socrates  should  in- 
tercept his  letter,  he  carries  it  himself  to  the  oflSce. 
But,  sixthly,  see  what  the  resolutions  of  men  are  !  In 
the  very  next  chapter,  and  when  time  has  advanced 
only  by  ten  pages  (but  unfortunately  after  the  letter- 
bags  were  made  up,)  Wilhelm  finds  himself  furiously 
in  love  with  a  friend  of  Theresa's  ;  not  that  he  has 
seen  her  since  post-time,  but  he  has  been  reminded  of 
her :  this  lady  is  Natalia,  and  turns  out  to  be  '*  the 
Amazon."  No  sooner  has  he  a  prospect  of  seeing  her 
than  "  all  the  glories  of  the  sky,"  he  vows,  "  are  as 
nothing  to  the  moment  which  he  looks  for."  In 
the  next  page  (145,)  this  moment  arrives;  Wilhelm 
reaches  the  house  where  she  lives  ;  on  entering,  "  finds 
it  the  most  earnest  and  (as  he  almost  felt)  the  holiest 
place  which  he  had  ever  trod  ; "  on  going  up  stairs  to 
the  drawing-room  is  obliged  to  kneel  down  "  to  get  a 
moment's  breathing  time ;  "  can  scarcely  raise  himself 
again  ;  and  upon  actual  introduction  to  the  divinity. 
"  falls  upon  his  knee,  seizes  her  hand,  and  kisses  it  with 
unbounded  rapture."  What 's  to  be  done  now,  Mr. 
Meister  ?  Pity  you  had  not  known  this  the  night  be- 
fore, or  had  intrusted  your  letter  to  Socrates,  or  had 
seen  some  verses  we  could  have  sent  you  from  Eng- 
land— 

"  'Tis  good  to  be  merry  and  wise, 
'Tis  good  to  be  honest  and  true ; 
'Tis  good  to  be  off  with  the  old  love, 
Before  you  be  on  with  the  new." 

Matters  begin  to  look  black,  especially  as  Theresa 
tccepts  his  offer ;  and  (as  though  Satan  himself  had  a 


J 

•'  WILHEI.M    MEISTER."  481 

plot  against  him)  in  consequence  of  that  very  visit  to 
Natalia  which  made  him  pray  that  she  would  not.  "  I 
hope  you  will  be  grateful,"  says  the  new  love :  "  for 
she  (viz.,  the  old  love)  asked  me  for  advice ;  and  as  it 
happened  that  you  were  here  just  then,  I  was  enabled 
to  destroy  the  few  scruples  which  my  friend  still  enter- 
tained." Here  's  delectable  news.  A  man  receives  a 
letter  from  a  lady  who  has  had  "  her  scruples  "  —  ac- 
cepting him  nevertheless,  but  begging  permission  "  at 
times  to  bestow  a  cordial  thought  upon  her  former 
friend "  (Lothario  to  wit) :  in  return  for  which  she 
"will  press  his  child  (by  a  former  mother)  to  her 
heart:"  such  a  letter  he  receives  from  one  Amazon; 
"  when  with  terror  he  discovers  in  his  heart  most  vivid 
traces  of  an  inclination  "  for  another  Amazon.  A  man 
can't  marry  two  Amazons.  Well,  thank  Heaven  !  it's 
no  scrape  of  ours.  A  German  wit  has  brought  us  all 
into  it;  and  a  German  denouement  shall  help  us  all  out. 
Le  void!  There  are  two  Amazons,  the  reader  knows. 
Good  :  now  one  of  these  is  ci-devant  sweetheart  to  Lo- 
thario, the  other  his  sister.  What  may  prevent  there- 
fore that  Meister  shall  have  the  sister,  and  Lothario 
(according  to  Horace's  arrangement  with  Lydias)  his 
old  sweetheart  ?  Nothing  but  this  sweetheart's  impa- 
tience, who  (p.  184,  iii.)  "dreads  that  she  shall  lose 
him "  (Meister)  "  and  not  regain  Lothario  ; "  i.  e.,  be- 
tween two  chairs,  etc.,  and  as  Meister  will  not  come  to 
her,  though  she  insists  upon  it  in  letter  after  letter, 
she  comes  to  Meister  ;  determined  to  "  hold  him  fast  " 
(p.  184,  iii.)  O  Amazon  of  little  faith  !  put  your  trust 
m  Mr.  Goethe,  and  he  will  deliver  you  !  This  he  does 
by  a  coup  de  theatre.  That  lady  whose  passions  had 
31 


182  "  WILIIELM   MEISTBR." 

earned  lier  into  the  south  of  France,  had  bestowed 
•ome  of  her  favors  upon  Lothario  :  but  she  is  reputed, 
the  mother  of  Theresa ;  and  hence  had  arisen  the  sep- 
aration between  Theresa  and  Lothario.  This  maternal 
person  however  is  suddenly  discovered  not  to  be  the 
mother  of  Theresa :  the  road  is  thus  opened  to  a  gen- 
eral winding  up  of  the  whole  concern  ;  and  the  novel. 
as  W3  said  before,  hastens  to  its  close  amid  a  grand 
bravura  of  kissing  and  catch-match-making.  In  the 
general  row,  even  old  Major  Socrates  catches  a  wife ; 
and  a  young  one  *^  too,  though  probably  enough  we  fear 
a  Xantippe. 

Thus  we  have  made  Mr.  von  Goethe's  novel  speak 
for  itself.  And  whatever  impression  it  may  leave  on 
the  reader's  mind,  let  it  be  charged  upon  the  composer. 
If  that  impression  is  one  of  entii'e  disgust,  let  it  not  be 
forgotten  that  it  belongs  exclusively  to  Mr.  Goethe 
The  music  is  his :  we  have  but  arranged  the  concert 
and  led  in  the  orchestra. 

Even  thus  qualified,  however,  the  task  is  not  to  us 
an  agreeable  one ;  our  practice  is  to  turn  away  our 
eyes  from  whatsoever  we  are  compelled  to  loathe  or  to 
disdain  ;  and  to  leave  all  that  dishonors  human  nature 
to  travel  on  its  natural  road  to  shame  and  oblivion. 
If  in  this  instance  we  depart  from  that  maxim,  it  is  in 
consideration  of  the  rank  which  the  author  has  ob- 
tained elsewhere,  and  through  his  partisans  is  struggling 
for  in  this  country.  Without  the  passport  of  an  emi 
nent  name,  "  Wilhelm  Meister "  is  a  safe  book ;  buj 
backed  in  that  way  the  dullest  books  are  floated  into 
popularity  (thousands  echoing  their  praise,  who  are  no^ 
*ware  of  the  matter  they  contain)  :  and  thus  even  suck 


•' WILHELM   MEI8TER."  483 

books  become  influential  and  are  brought  within  the 
•emark  of  Cicero  ("  De  Lcgg.,"  lib.  3)  ou  the  mischief 
done  by  profligate  men  of  rank :  "  Quod  non  solum 
vitia  concipiunt,  sed  ea  infundunt  in  civitatem ;  neque 
solum  obsunt  quia  ipsi  corrumpuntur,  sed  quia  corraoi' 
punt ;  plusque  exemplo  quam  peccato  nocent." 


SCHILLER. 

John  Chkistopheb,  Feedekick  von  Schillxi 
was  bom  at  Marbach,  a  small  town  in  the  duchy  of 
Wiirtemberg,  on  the  10th  day  of  November,  1759.  It 
will  aid  th,e  reader  in  synchronizing  the  periods  of 
this  great  man's  life  with  the  corresponding  events 
throughout  Christendom,  if  we  direct  his  attention  to 
the  fact,  that  Schiller's  birth  nearly  coincided  in  point 
of  time  with  that  of  Robert  Burns,  and  that  it  pre- 
ceded that  of  Napoleon  by  about  ten  years. 

The  position  of  Schiller  is  remarkable.  In  the  land 
of  his  birth,  by  those  who  undervalue  him  the  most, 
he  is  ranked  as  the  second  name  in  German  literature ; 
everywhere  else  he  is  ranked  as  the  first.  For  us, 
who  are  aliens  to  Germany,  Schiller  is  the  representa- 
tive of  the  German  intellect  in  its  highest  form  ;  and 
to  him,  at  all  events,  whether  first  or  second,  it  is  cer- 
tainly due,  that  the  German  intellect  has  become  a 
known  power,  and  a  power  of  growing  magnitude,  for 
the  great  commonwealth  of  Christendom.  Luther  and 
Kepler,  potent  intellects  as  they  were,  did  not  make 
themselves  known  as  Germans.  The  revolutionary 
rigor  of  the  one,  the  staiTy  lustre  of  the  other,  blended 
with  the  convulsions  of  reformation,  or  with  the  aurora 
9f  ucending  Bcieuce,  in  too  kindly  and  genial  a  tone  t( 


8CHILLEB.  485 

sail  off  the  attention  from  the  work  which  they  per- 
'  formed,  from  the  service  which  they  promoted,  to  the 
circumstances  of  their  personal  position.  Their  coun^ 
try,  their  birth,  their  abode,  even  their  separate  exist- 
ence, was  merged  in  the  mighty  cause  to  which  they 
lent  their  cooperation.  And  thus  at  the  beginning  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  thus  at  the  beginning  of  the 
seventeenth,  did  the  Titan  sons  of  Germany  defeat 
their  own  private  pretensions  by  the  very  grandeur  of 
their  merits.  Their  interest  as  patriots  was  lost  and 
confounded  in  their  paramount  interest  as  cosmopo- 
lites. What  they  did  for  man  and  for  human  dignity 
eclipsed  what  they  had  designed  for  Germany.  After 
them  there  was  a  long  interlunar  period  of  darkness 
for  the  land  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Danube.  The 
German  energy,  too  spasmodically  excited,  suffered  a 
collapse.  Throughout  the  whole  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  but  one  vigorous  mind  arose  for  permanent 
effects  in  literature.  This  was  Optiz,  a  poet  who  de- 
serves even  yet  to  be  read  with  attention,  but  who  is 
no  more  worthy  to  be  classed  as  the  Dryden,  whom 
his  too  partial  countrymen  have  styled  him,  than  the 
Germany  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  of  taking  rank  by 
ihe  side  of  civUized  and  cultured  England  during  the 
Cromwellian  era,  or  Klopstock  of  sitting  on  the  same 
throne  with  Milton.  Leibnitz  was  the  one  sole  po- 
tentate in  the  fields  of  intellect  whom  the  Germany 
of  this  century  produced  ;  and  he,  like  Luther  and 
Kepler,  impresses  us  rather  as  a  European  than  as  a 
German  mind,  partly  perhaps  from  his  having  pursued 
his  self-development  in  foreign  lands,  partly  from  his 
Wge  circle  of  foreign  connections,  but  most  or  all  from 
lis   having   written   chiefly   in   French   or  in  Latin. 


(86  SCHILLER. 

Passing  onwards  to  the  eighteenth  century,  we  find, 
through  its  earlier  half,  an  absolute  wilderness,  unre- 
claimed and  without  promise  of  natural  vegetation,  h$ 
the  barren  arena  on  which  the  few  insipid  writers  of 
Germany  paraded.  The  torpor  of  academic  dulnees 
domineered  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land. 
And  as  these  academic  bodies  were  universally  found 
harnessed  in  the  equipage  of  petty  courts,  it  followed 
that  the  lethargies  of  pedantic  dulness  were  uniformly 
deepened  by  the  lethargies  of  aulic  and  ceremonia] 
dulness ;  so  that,  if  the  reader  represents  to  himself 
the  very  abstract  oi  birthday  odes,  sycophantish  dedi- 
cations, and  court  sermons,  he  will  have  some  adequate 
idea  of  the  sterility  and  the  mechanical  formality 
which  at  that  era  spread  the  sleep  of  death  over  Ger- 
man literature.  Literature,  the  very  word  literature, 
points  the  laughter  of  scorn  to  what  passed  under  that 
name  during  the  period  of  Gottsched.  That  such  a 
man  indeed  as  this  Gottsched,  equal  at  the  best  to  the 
composition  of  a  Latin  grammar  or  a  school  arithmetic, 
should  for  a  moment  have  presided  over  the  German 
muses,  stands  out  as  in  itself  a  brief  and  significant 
■nemorial,  too  certain  for  contradiction,  and  yet  almost 
too  gross  for  belief,  of  the  apoplectic  sleep  under 
which  the  mind  of  central  Europe  at  that  era  lay  op- 
:ressed.  The  rust  of  disuse  had  corroded  the  very 
principles  of  activity.  And,  as  if  the  double  night  of 
academic  dulness,  combined  with  the  dulness  of  court 
inanities,  had  not  been  sufficient  for  the  stifling  of  all 
native  energies,  the  feebleness  of  French  models  (and 
of  these  moreover  naturalized  through  still  feebler 
imitations)  had  become  the  law  and  standard  for  all 
attempts  at  original   composition.     The  darkness  of 


8CHILLEB.  487 

night,  it  is  usxially  said,  grows  deeper  as  it  approaches 
the  dawn  ;  and  the  very  enormitv  of  that  prostration 
under  which  the  German  intellect  at  this  time  groaned, 
was  the  most  certain  pledge  to  any  observing  eye  of 
that  intense  re-action  soon  to  stir  and  kindle  among 
the  smouldering  activities  of  this  spell-boimd  people. 
This  re-action,  however,  was  not  abrupt  and  theatrical. 
It  moved  through  slow  stages  and  by  equable  grada- 
tions. It  might  be  said  to  commence  from  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  that  is,  about  nine  years 
before  the  birth  of  Schiller ;  but  a  progress  of  forty 
years  had  not  carried  it  so  towards  its  meridian  alti- 
tude, as  that  the  sympathetic  shock  from  the  French 
Revolution  was  by  one  fraction  more  rude  and  shatter- 
ing than  the  public  torpor  still  demanded.  There  is  a 
memorable  correspondency  throughout  all  members  of 
Protestant  Christendom  in  whatsoever  relates  to  litera- 
ture and  intellectual  advance.  However  imperfect  the 
organization  which  binds  them  together,  it  was  suffi- 
cient even  in  these  elder  times  to  transmit  reciprocally 
from  one  to  every  other,  so  much  of  that  illumination 
which  could  be  gathered  into  books,  that  no  Christian 
<tate  could  be  much  in  advance  of  another,  supposing 
.hat  Popery  opposed  no  barriers  to  free  communica- 
tion, unless  only  in  those  points  which  depended  upon 
^ocal  gifts  of  nature,  upon  the  genius  of  a  particular 
people,  or  upon  the  excellence  of  its  institutions. 
These  advantages  were  incommunicable,  let  the  free- 
dom of  intercourse  have  been  what  it  might.  England 
could  not  send  off  by  posts  or  by  heralds  her  iron  and 
coals ;  she  could  not  send  the  indomitable  energy  of 
her  population  ;  she  could  Lot  send  the  absolute  se- 
turity  of  property  ;   she  ccald  not  send  the  good  faitb 


4^^  8CHII.LEK. 

of  her  parliaments.  These  were  gifts  indigenous  to 
Qerself,  either  through  the  temperament  of  her  people, 
or  through  the  original  endowments  of  her  soil.  But 
her  condition  of  moral  sentiment,  her  high-toned  civic 
elevation,  her  atmosphere  of  political  feeling  and 
popiilar  boldness,  much  of  these  she  could  and  did 
transmit,  by  the  radiation  of  the  press,  to  the  very 
extremities  of  the  German  empire.  Not  only  were 
our  books  translated,  but  it  is  notorious  to  those  ac- 
quainted with  German  novels,  or  other  pictures  of 
German  society,  that  as  early  as  the  Seven  Years' 
War,  (1756-1763,)  in  fact  from  the  very  era  when 
Cave  and  Dr.  Johnson  first  made  the  parliamentary 
debates  accessible  to  the  English  themselves,  most  ol 
the  German  journals  repeated,  and  sent  forward  as  by 
telegraph,  those  senatorial  displays  to  every  vUlage 
throughout  Germany.  From  the  polar  latitudes  to  the 
Mediterranean,  from  the  mouths  of  the  Rhine  to  th*} 
Euxine,  there  was  no  other  exhibition  of  free  delibera- 
tive eloquence  in  any  popular  assembly.  And  the 
Luise  of  Voss  alone,  a  metrical  idyl  not  less  valued 
for  its  truth  of  portraiture  than  our  own  Vicar  of 
Wakefield,  will  show,  that  the  most  sequestered  clergy- 
man of  a  rural  parish  did  not  think  his  breakfast 
equipage  complete  without  the  latest  report  from  the 
great  senate  that  sat  in  London.  Hence  we  need  no* 
be  astonished  that  German  and  English  literature  were 
found  by  the  French  Revolution  in  pretty  nearly  the. 
same  condition  of  semi- vigilance  and  imperfect  anima- 
tion. That  mighty  event  reached  us  both,  reached  ua 
all,  we  may  say,  (speaking  of  Protestant  states,)  at  Iht 
lame  moment,  by  the  same  tremendous  galvanism 
The  snake,  the  intellectual  snake,  that  lay  in  ambusb 


SCHII.LEB.  489 

unong  all  nations,  roused  itself,  sloughed  itself,  re- 
aewed  its  youth,  in  all  of  them  at  the  same  period.  A 
new  world  opened  upon  us  all ;  new  revolutions  of 
thought  arose  ;  new  and  nobler  activities  were  born  ; 
'  and  other  palms  were  won.' 

But  by  and  through  Schiller  it  was,  as  its  main 
organ,  that  this  great  revolutionary  impulse  expressed 
itself.  Already,  as  we  have  said,  not  less  than  forty 
years  before  the  earthquake  by  which  France  exploded 
and  projected  the  scoria  of  her  huge  crater  over  all 
Christian  lands,  a  stirring  had  commenced  among  the 
dry  bones  of  intellectual  Germany ;  and  symptoms 
irose  that  the  breath  of  life  would  soon  disturb,  by 
nobler  agitations  than  by  petty  personal  quarrels,  the 
deathlike  repose  even  of  the  German  universities. 
Precisely  in  those  bodies,  however,  it  was,  in  those  aa 
connected  with  tyrannical  governments,  each  academic 
body  being  shackled  to  its  own  petty  centre  of  local 
despotism,  that  the  old  spells  remained  unlinked ;  and 
to  them,  equally  remarkable  as  firm  trustees  of  truth, 
and  as  obstinate  depositories  of  darkness  or  of  super- 
annuated prejudice,  we  must  ascribe  the  slowness  of 
the  German  movement  on  the  path  of  re-ascent.  Mean- 
time the  earliest  torch-bearer  to  the  murky  literature 
of  this  'great  land,  this  crystallization  of  political  states, 
was  Bodmer.  This  man  had  no  demoniac  genius, 
Buch  as  the  service  required  ;  but  he  had  some  taste, 
and,  what  was  better,  he  had  some  sensibility.  Ho 
lived  among  the  Alps  ;  and  his  reading  lay  among  the 
^lpine  sublimities  of  MUton  and  Shakspeare.  Through 
his  very  eyes  he  imbibed  a  daily  scorn  of  Gottsched 
»nd  his  monstrous  compound  of  German  coarseness, 
with  French  sensual  levity,     lie  could  not  look  at  his 


490  8CUILLEB. 

aative  Alps,  but  he  saw  in  them,  and  tbeir  austere 
grandeurs  or  their  dread  realities,  a  spiritual  reproach 
to  the  hoUowness  and  falsehood  of  that  dull  imposture, 
which  Gottsched  offered  by  way  of  substitute  foi 
nature.  He  was  taught  by  the  Alps  to  crave  for 
something  nobler  and  deeper.  Bodmer,  though  far 
below  such  a  function,  rose  by  favor  of  circumstances 
into  an  apostle  or  missionary  of  truth  for  Germany. 
He  translated  passages  of  English  literature.  He  in- 
oculated with  his  own  sympathies  the  more  fervent 
mind  of  the  youthful  Klopstock,  who  visited  him  in 
Switzerland.  And  it  soon  became  evident,  that  Ger- 
many was  not  dead,  but  sleeping ;  and  once  again, 
legibly  for  any  eye,  the  pulses  of  life  began  to  play  freely 
through  the  vast  organization  of  central  Europe. 

Klopstock,  however,  though  a  fervid,  a  religious, 
and,  for  that  reason,  an  anti-Gallican  mind,  was  himself 
an  abortion.  Such,  at  least,  is  our  own  opinion  of  this 
poet.  He  was  the  child  and  creature  of  enthusiasm, 
but  of  enthusiasm  not  allied  with  a  masculine  intellect, 
or  any  organ  for  that  capacious  vision,  and  meditative 
range,  which  his  subjects  demanded.  He  was  essen- 
tially thoughtless,  betrays  everywhere  a  most  effeminate 
quality  of  sensibility,  and  is  the  sport  of  that  pseudo- 
enthusiasm,  and  baseless  rapture,  which  we  see  so 
often  allied  with  the  excitement  of  strong  liquors.  In 
taste,  or  the  sense  of  proportions  and  congruencies,  or 
the  harmonious  adaptations,  he  is  perhaps  the  most 
iefective  writer  extant. 

But  if  no  patriarch  of  German  literature,  in  the  sense 
i)f  having  shaped  the  moulds  in  which  it  was  to  flow,  in 
the  sense  of  having  disciplined  its  taste,  or  excited  itf 
rivalship,  by  classical  models  of  excellence,  or  raised  » 


SCHILLER.  49) 

anished  standard  of  style,  perhaps  we  irust  concede 
that,  on  a  minor  scale,  Klopstock  did  something  of  that 
service  in  every  one  of  these  departments.  His  works 
were  at  least  Mil  tonic  in  their  choice  of  subjects,  if 
ludicrously  non-Miltonic  in  their  treatment  of  those 
subjects.  And  whether  due  to  him  or  not,  it  if 
undeniable  that  in  his  time  the  mother-tongue  of  Ger- 
many revived  from  the  most  absolute  degradation  on 
record,  to  its  ancient  purity.  In  the  time  of  Gottsched, 
the  authors  of  Germany  wrote  a  macaronic  j  argon,  in 
which  French  and  Latin  made  up  a  considerable  pro- 
portion of  every  sentence  :  nay,  it  happened  often  that 
foreign  words  were  inflected  with  German  forms  ;  and 
the  whole  result  was  such  as  to  remind  the  reader  of 
the  medical  examination  in  the  Malade  Imaginaire  of 
Moliere  : 

'  Quid  poetea  est  k  faire  ? 

Saignare 

Baignare 

Ensuita  purgare,'  &c. 

N«w,  is  it  not  reasonable  to  ascribe  some  share  in  the 
restoration  of  good  to  Klopstock,  both  because  his  own 
writings  exhibit  nothing  of  this  most  abject  euphuism, 
(a  euphuism  expressing  itself  not  in  fantastic  refine- 
ments on  the  staple  of  the  language,  but  altogether  in 
rejecting  it  for  foreign  words  and  idioms,)  and  because 
he  wrote  expressly  on  the  subject  of  style  and  compo- 
sition ? 

Wieland,  meantime,  if  not  enjoying  so  intense  an 
acceptation  as  Klopstock,  had  a  more  extensive  one ; 
and  it  is  in  vain  to  deny  him  the  praise  of  a  festive, 
brilliant,  and  most  versatile  wit.  The  Schlegels  showed 
ftie  haughty  malignity  of  their  ungenerous  natures,  in 


192  SCHILLEB. 

depreciatiag  Wieland,  at  a  time  when  old  age  had  laid 
a  freezing  hand  upon  the  energy  which  he  would  cnee 
have  put  forth  in  defending  himself.  He  was  the 
Voltaire  of  Germany,  and  very  much  more  than  the 
Voltaire  ;  for  his  romantic  and  legendary  poems  are 
above  the  level  of  Voltaire.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
he  was  a  Voltaire  in  sensual  impurity.  To  work,  to 
carry  on  a  plot,  to  affect  his  readers  by  voluptuous  im- 
pressions, —  these  were  the  unworthy  aims  of  Wieland ; 
and  though  a  good-natured  critic  would  not  refuse  to 
make  some  allowance  for  a  youthful  poet's  aberrations 
in  this  respect,  yet  the  indulgence  cannot  extend  itself 
to  mature  years.  An  old  man  corrupting  his  readers, 
attempting  to  corrupt  them,  or  relying  for  his  effect 
upon  corruptions  already  effected,  in  the  purity  of  their 
affections,  is  a  hideous  object;  and  that  must  be  a 
precarious  influence  indeed  which  depends  for  its  dura- 
bility upon  the  licentiousness  of  men.  Wieland,  there- 
fore, except  in  parts,  will  not  last  as  a  national  idol ; 
but  such  he  was  nevertheless  for  a  time. 

Burger  wrote  too  little  of  any  expansive  compass  to 
give  the  measure  of  his  powers,  or  to  found  national 
impression  ;  Lichtenberg,  though  a  very  gracious  ob- 
server, never  rose  into  what  can  be  called  a  power,  he 
lid  not  modify  his  age  ;  yet  these  were  both  men  of 
extraordinary  talent,  and  Burger  a  man  of  undoubted 
genius.  On  the  other  hand,  Lessing  was  merely  a 
man  of  talent,  but  of  talent  in  the  highest  degree 
idapted  to  popularity.  His  very  defects,  and  the  shal- 
lowness of  his  philosophy,  promoted  his  popularity ; 
»nd  by  comparison  with  the  French  critics  on  the 
aramatic  or  scenical  proprieties  he  is  ever  profound. 
His  plummet,  if  not  suited  to  the  soundless  depths  o) 


8CHILLEK.  493 

Shakspeare,  was  able  ten  times  over  to  fathom  the  little 
rivulets  of  Parisian  philosophy.  This  he  did  effectu- 
ally,  and  thus  unconsciously  leveLed  the  path  for 
Shakspeare,  and  for  that  supreme  dominion  which  he 
has  since  held  over  the  German  stage,  by  crushing 
with  his  sarcastic  shrewdness  the  pretensions  of  all  who 
stood  in  the  way.  At  that  time,  and  even  yet,  the  func- 
tions of  a  literary  man  were  very  important  in  Germa- 
ny ;  the  popular  mind  and  the  popular  instinct  pointed 
one  way,  those  of  the  little  courts  another.  Multitudes 
of  little  German  states  (many  of  which  were  absorbed 
since  1816  by  the  process  oi  mediatizing)  made  it  their 
ambition  to  play  at  keeping  mimic  armies  in  their  pay, 
and  to  ape  the  greater  military  sovereigns,  by  encour- 
aging French  literature  only,  and  the  French  language 
at  their  courts.  It  was  this  latter  propensity  which 
had  generated  the  anomalous  macaronic  dialect,  of 
which  we  have  already  spoken  as  a  characteristic  cir- 
cumstance in  the  social  features  of  literary  Germany  dur- 
ing the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Nowhere 
else,  within  the  records  of  human  follies  do  we  find  a 
corresponding  case,  in  which  the  government  and  the 
patrician  orders  in  the  state,  taking  for  granted,  and 
absolutely  postulating  the  utter  worthlessness  for 
intellectual  aims  of  those  in  and  by  whom  they  main- 
tained their  own  grandeur  and  independence,  undia- 
guisedly  and  even  professedly  sought  to  ally  themselves 
with  a  foreign  literature,  foreign  literati,  and  a  foreign 
Itnguage.  In  this  unexampled  display  of  scorn  for 
nanve  resources,  and  the  consequent  collision  between 
*.he  TWO  principles  of  action,  all  depended  upon  the 
people  themselves.  For  a  time  the  wicked  and  most 
profligate  contempt  of  the  local  governments  for  that 


494  SCHILLEB. 

oative  merit  which  it  was  their  duty  to  evoke  and  to 
cherish,  naturally  enough  produced  its  own  justifica- 
tion. Like  Jews  or  slaves,  whom  all  the  world  have 
agreed  to  hold  contemptible,  the  German  literati  found 
it  hard  to  make  head  against  so  obstinate  a  prejudg- 
ment ;  and  too  often  they  became  all  that  they  were 
presumed  to  be.  Sint  Mcecenates,  non  deerunt,  Flacce, 
Marones.  And  the  converse  too  often  holds  good  — 
that  when  all  who  should  have  smiled  scowl  upon  a 
man,  he  turns  out  the  abject  thing  they  have  predicted. 
Where  Frenchified  Fredericks  sit  upon  German  thrones, 
it  should  not  surprise  us  to  see  a  crop  of  Gottscheds 
arise  as  the  best  fruitage  of  the  land.  But  when  there 
is  any  latent  nobility  in  the  popular  mind,  such  scorn, 
by  its  very  extremity,  will  call  forth  its  own  counterac- 
tion. It  was  perhaps  good  for  Germany  that  a  prince 
so  eminent  in  one  aspect  as  Fritz  der  einziger,*  should 
put  on  record  so  emphatically  his  intense  conviction, 
that  no  good  thing  could  arise  out  of  Germany.  This 
creed  was  expressed  by  the  quality  of  the  French  minds 
which  he  attracted  to  his  court.  The  very  refuse  and 
dregs  of  the  Parisian  coteries  satisfied  his  hunger  for 
French  garbage  :  the  very  ofial  of  their  shambles  met 
the  demand  of  his  palate  ;  even  a  Maupertuis,  so  long 
as  he  could  produce  a  French  baptismal  certificate,  was 
good  enough  to  manufacture  into  the  president  of  a 
Berlin  academy.  Such  scorn  challenged  a  re-action  ; 
the  contest  lay  between  the  thrones  of  Germany  and 
the  popular  intellect,  and  the  final  result  was  inevitable. 

• '  Freddy  the  unique  ;  *  which  is  the  name  by  which  th« 
Prussians  expressed  their  admiration  of  the  martial  and  indom 
hable,  though  somewhat  £Eintastic,  king. ' 


8CHILLEB.  495 

Ouce  aware  that  they  were  insulted,  once  enlightened 
JO  the  full  consciousness  of  the  scorn  which  trampled  on 
them  as  intellectual  and  predestined  Heliots,  even  the 
mild-tempered  Germans  became  fierce,  and  now  began 
to  aspire,  not  merely  under  the  ordinary  instincts  of 
personal  ambition,  but  with  a  vindictive  feeling,  and  as 
conscious  agents  of  retribution.  It  became  a  pleasure 
with  the  German  author,  that  the  very  same  works 
which  elevated  himself,  wreaked  his  nation  upon  their 
princes,  and  poured  retorted  scorn  upon  their  mt)8t  un- 
generous and  unparental  sovereigns.  Already,  in  the 
reign  of  the  martial  Frederick,  the  men  who  put  most 
weight  of  authority  into  his  contempt  of  Germans,  — 
Euler,  the  matchless  Euler,  Lambert,  and  Immanuel 
Kant,  —  had  vindicated  the  preeminence  of  German 
mathematics.  Already,  in  1755,  had  the  same  Imman- 
uel Kant,  whilst  yet  a  probationer  for  the  chair  of  logic 
in  a  Prussian  university,  sketched  the  outline  of  that 
philosophy  which  has  secured  the  admiration,  though 
not  the  assent,  of  all  men  known  and  proved  to  have 
understood  it,  of  all  men  able  to  state  its  doctrines  in 
terms  admissible  by  its  disciples.  Already,  and  even 
previously,  had  Haller,  who  wrote  in  German,  placed 
himself  at  the  head  of  the  current  physiology.  And  in 
the  fields  of  science  or  of  philosophy,  the  victory  was 
already  decided  for  the  German  intellect  in  compet  tion 
with  the  French. 

But  the  fields  of  literature  were  still  comparatively 
barren.  Klopstock  was  at  least  an  anomaly  ;  Lessing 
did  not  present  himself  in  the  impassioned  walks  of 
•iterature  ;  Herder  was  viewed  too  much  in  the  exclu' 
•ive  and  professional  light  of  a  clergyman ;  and, 
with  the  exception  of  John  Paul  Richter,  a  man  of 


196  8CHILLKR. 

most  original  genius,  but  quite  unfitted  for  genera, 
popularity,  no  commanding  mind  arose  in  Germany 
with  powers  for  levying  homage  from  foreign  nations, 
until  the  appearance,  as  a  great  scenical  poet,  of  Fred- 
erick Schiller. 

The  father  of  this  great  poet  was  Caspar  Schiller,  an 
officer  in  the  military  service  of  the  Duke  of  Wurtem- 
berg.  He  had  previously  served  as  a  surgeon  in  the 
Bavarian  army  ;  but  on  his  final  return  to  his  native 
country  of  Wiirtemberg,  and  to  the  service  of  his  na- 
tive prince,  he  laid  aside  his  medical  character  for  ever, 
and  obtained  a  commission  as  ensign  and  adjutant. 
In  1763,  the  Peace  of  Paris  threw  him  out  of  his  mili- 
tary employment,  with  the  nominal  rank  of  captain. 
But,  having  conciliated  the  duke's  favor,  he  was  still 
borne  on  the  books  of  the  ducal  establishment ;  and,  aa 
a  planner  of  ornamental  gardens,  or  in  some  other 
civU  capacity,  he  continued  to  serve  his  serene  highness 
for  the  rest  of  his  life. 

The  parents  of  Schiller  were  both  pious,  upright 
persons,  with  that  loyal  fidelity  to  duty,  and  that 
humble  simplicity  of  demeanor  towards  their  superiors, 
which  is  so  often  found  among  the  unpretending  na- 
tives of  Germany.  It  is  probable,  however,  that 
Schiller  owed  to  his  mother  excluAJvely  the  preterna- 
tural endowments  of  his  intellect.  She  was  of  humble 
origin,  the  daughter  of  a  baker,  and  not  so  fortunate 
as  to  have  received  much  education.  But  she  wan 
•ipparently  rich  in  gifts  of  the  heart  and  the  under- 
standing. She  read  poetry  with  delight ;  and  through 
the  profound  filial  love  with  which  she  had  inspired 
aer  son,  she  found  it  easy  to  communicate  her  own 
fiterarv  '-uti^H.     Her  husband  was  not  illiterate,  ani^ 


BCHILLKR.  497 

bad  in  mature  life  so  laudably  applied  himself  to  the 
improvement  of  his  own  defective  knowledge,  that  at 
length  he  thought  himself  capable  of  appearing  before 
the  public  as  an  author.  His  book  related  simply  to 
the  subjects  of  his  professional  experience  as  a  horti- 
culturist, and  was  entitled  Die  Baumzucht,  im  Grossen 
(On  the  management  of  Forests).  Some  merit  we 
must  suppose  it  to  have  had,  since  the  public  called  for 
a  second  edition  of  it  long  after  his  own  death,  and 
even  after  that  of  his  illustrious  son.  And  although 
he  was  a  plain  man,  of  no  pretensions,  and  possibly 
even  of  slow  faculties,  he  has  left  behind  him  a  prayer, 
m  which  there  is  one  petition  of  sublime  and  pathetic 
piety,  worthy  to  be  remembered  by  the  side  of  Agar's 
wise  prayer  against  almost  the  equal  temptations  of 
poverty  and  riches.  At  the  birth  of  his  son,  he  had 
been  reflecting  with  sorrowful  anxiety,  not  unmingled 
with  self-reproach,  on  his  own  many  disqualifications 
for  conducting  the  education  of  the  child.  But  at 
length,  reading  in  his  own  manifold  imperfections  but 
80  many  reiterations  of  the  necessity  that  he  should 
rely  upon  God's  bounty,  converting  his  very  defects 
into  so  many  arguments  of  hope  and  confidence  in 
Heaven,  he  prayed  thus  :  '  Oh  God,  that  knowest  my 
poverty  in  good  gifts  for  my  son's  inheritance,  gracious- 
ly permit  that,  even  as  the  want  of  bread  became  to 
thy  son's  hunger-stricken  flock  in  the  mlderness  the 
pledge  of  overflowing  abundance,  so  likewise  my  dark- 
uess  may,  in  its  sad  extremity,  carry  with  it  the  meas- 
ure of  thy  unfathomable  light ;  and  because  I,  thy 
worm,  cauxiot  give  to  my  son  the  least  of  blessings,  do 
thou  give  the  greatest ;  because  in  my  hands  there  in 
aot  any  thing,  do  thou  from  thine  pour  jut  all  things ; 


498  SOHILLEK. 

and  that  temple  of  a  new-bom  spirit,  which  I  cannot 
adorn  even  with  earthly  ornaments  of  dust  and  ashes, 
do  thou  irradiate  with  the  celestial  adornment  of  thy 
presence,  and  finally  with  that  peace  that  passeth  all 
understanding.' 

Reared  at  the  feet  of  parents  so  pious  and  affection- 
ate, Schiller  would  doubtless  pass  a  happy  childhood ; 
and  probably  to  this  utter  tranquillity  of  his  earlier 
years,  to  his  seclusion  from  all  that  could  create  pain, 
or  even  anxiety,  we  must  ascribe  the  unusual  dearth  of 
anecdotes  from  this  period  of  his  life  ;  a  dearth  which 
has  tempted  some  of  his  biographers  into  improving 
and  embellishing  some  puerile  stories,  which  a  man  of 
sense  will  inevitably  reject  as  too  trivial  for  his  gravity 
or  loo  fantastical  for  his  faith.  That  nation  is  happy, 
according  to  a  common  adage,  which  furnishes  little 
business  to  the  historian ;  for  such  a  vacuity  in  facts 
argues  a  condition  of  perfect  peace  and  silent  prosper- 
ity. That  childhood  is  happy,  or  may  generally  be 
presumed  such,  which  has  furnished  few  records  of 
external  experience,  little  that  has  appeared  in  doing  or 
in  suffering  to  the  eyes  of  companions ;  for  the  child 
who  has  been  made  happy  by  early  thoughtfulness, 
and  by  infantine  struggles  with  the  great  ideas  of  his 
origin  and  his  destination,  (ideas  M'hich  settle  with  a 
deep,  dove-like  brooding  upon  the  mind  of  childhood, 
more  than  of  mature  life,  vexed  with  inroads  from  the 
noisy  world,)  will  not  manifest  the  workings  of  his 
spirit  by  much  of  external  activity.  The  fallentu 
semita  vita,  that  path  of  noiseless  life,  which  eludes 
*nd  deceives  the  conscious  notice  both  of  its  sub- 
lect  and  of  all  around  him,  opens  equally  to  tht 
Qiaa  and  to  the  child ;  and  the  happiest  of  all  child 


8CHIIil.£B.  499 

aoods  will  have  been  that  of  which  the  happiness  ha» 
survived  and  expressed  itself,  not  in  distinct  recrrds, 
but  in  deep  affection,  in  abiding  love,  and  the  haunt* 
ings  of  meditative  power. 

Such  a  childhood,  in  the  bosom  of  maternal  tender- 
ness, was  probably  passed  by  Schiller;  and  his  first 
awaking  to  the  world  of  strife  and  perplexity  happened 
in  his  fourteenth  year.  Up  to  that  period  his  life  had 
been  vagrant,  agreeably  to  the  shifting  necessities  of  the 
ducal  service,  and  his  education  desultory  and  domes- 
tic. But  in  the  year  1773  he  was  solemnly  entered  as 
a  member  of  a  new  academical  institution,  founded  by 
the  reigning  duke,  and  recently  translated  to  his  little 
capital  of  Stutgard.  This  change  took  place  at  the 
special  request  of  the  duke,  who,  under  the  mask  of 
patronage,  took  upon  himself  the  severe  control  of  the 
whole  simple  family.  The  parents  were  probably  both 
too  humble  and  dutiful  in  spirit  towards  one  whom  they 
regarded  in  the  double  light  of  sovereign  lord  and  of 
personal  benefactor,  ever  to  murmur  at  the  ducal  be- 
hests, far  less  to  resist  them.  The  duke  was  for  them 
an  earthly  providence ;  and  they  resigned  themselves, 
together  with  their  child,  to  the  disposal  of  him  who 
dispensed  their  earthly  blessings,  not  less  meekly  than 
of  Him  whose  vicegerent  they  presumed  him  to  be.  In 
such  a  frame  of  mind,  requests  are  but  another  name 
for  commands ;  and  thus  it  happened  that  a  second 
"hange  arose  upon  the  first,  even  more  determinately 
fatal  to  the  young  Schiller's  happiness.  Hitherto  he 
had  cherished  a  day-dream  pointing  to  the  pastoral 
office  in  some  rural  district,  as  that  vhich  would  har- 
nionize  best  with  his  intellectual  purposes,  witli  hii 
ove  of  quiet,  and  by  means  of  its  preparatory  reqiiire- 


600  8CHILLEB. 

nents,  best  also  with  his  own  peculiar  choice  of  studies. 
But  this  scheme  he  now  felt  himself  compelled  to 
sacrifice ;  and  the  two  evils  which  fell  upon  him  con- 
currently in  his  new  situation,  were,  first,  the  forma] 
military  discipline  and  monotonous  routine  of  duty ; 
secondly,  the  uncongenial  direction  of  the  studies,  whicL 
were  shaped  entirely  to  the  attainment  of  legal  know  - 
ledge,  and  the  narrow  service  of  the  local  tribunals. 
So  illiberal  and  so  exclusive  a  system  of  education 
was  revolting  to  the  expansive  mind  of  Schiller ;  and 
the  military  bondage  under  which  this  system  was 
enforced,  shocked  the  aspiring  nobility  of  his  moral 
nature,  not  less  than  the  technical  narrowness  of  the 
studies  shocked  his  understanding.  In  point  of  ex- 
pense, the  whole  establishment  cost  nothing  at  all  to 
those  parents  who  were  privileged  servants  of  the 
duke ;  in  this  number  were  the  parents  of  Schiller, 
and  that  single  consideration  weighed  too  powerfully 
upon  his  fi.lial  piety  to  allow  of  his  openly  murmuring 
at  his  lot ;  while  on  their  part  the  parents  were  equally 
shy  of  encouraging  a  disgust  which  too  obviously 
tended  to  defeat  the  promises  of  ducal  favor.  This 
system  of  monotonous  confinement  was  therefore  car- 
ried to  its  completion,  and  the  murmurs  of  the  young 
Schiller  were  either  dutifully  suppressed,  or  found 
vent  only  in  secret  letters  to  a  friend.  In  one  point 
dnly  Schiller  was  able  to  improve  his  condition  ;  jointly 
with  the  juristic  department,  was  another  for  training 
young  aspirants  to  the  medical  profession.  To  this 
fts  promising  a  more  enlarged  scheme  of  study,  Schiller 
by  permission  transferred  himself  in  1775.  But  what 
•ver  relief  lie  might  find  in  the  nature  of  his  nev 


BOniLLSK.  50] 

itudies,  lie  found  none  at  all  in  the  system  of  personal 
discipline  which  prevailed. 

Under  the  oppression  of  this  detested  system,  and 
by  pure  re-action  against  its  wearing  persecutions,  we 
learn  from  Schiller  himself,  that  in  his  nineteenth  year 
he  undertook  the  earliest  of  his  surviving  plays,  the 
Robbers,  beyond  doubt  the  most  tempestuous,  the 
most  volcanic,  we  might  say,  of  all  juvenile  creations 
anywhere  recorded.  He  himself  calls  it  '  a  monsrer,' 
and  a  monster  it  is ;  but  a  monster  which  has  never 
failed  to  convulse  the  heart  of  young  readers  with  the 
temperament  of  intellectual  enthusiasm  and  sensibility- 
True  it  is,  and  nobody  was  more  aware  of  that  fact 
than  Schiller  himself  in  after  years,  the  characters  of 
the  three  Moors,  father  and  sons,  are  mere  impossibili- 
ties ;  and  some  readers,  in  whom  the  judicious  ac- 
quaintance with  human  life  in  its  realities  has  outrun 
the  sensibilities,  are  so  much  shocked  by  these  hyper- 
natural  phenomena,  that  they  are  incapable  of  enjoying 
the  terrific  sublimities  which  on  that  basis  of  the  vis- 
ionary do  really  exist.  A  poet,  perhaps  Schiller  might 
have  alleged,  is  entitled  to  assume  hypothetically  so 
much  in  the  previous  positions  or  circumstances  of  his 
agents  as  is  requisite  to  the  basis  from  which  he  starts. 
It  is  undeniable  that  Shakspeare  and  others  have 
availed  themselves  of  this  principle,  and  with  memor- 
ible  success.  Shakspeare,  for  instance,  postulates  his 
witches,  his  Caliban,  his  Ariel :  grant,  he  virtually 
nays,  such  modes  of  spiritual  existence  or  of  spiritual 
relations  as  a  possibility  :  do  no'  expect  me  to  demon< 
strate  this,  and  upon  that  single  concession  I  will  rear 
«  superstructure  that  shall  be  self-consistent;  every* 


002  SCHILLEB. 

thing  shall  be  internally  coheient  and  reconciled, 
ivhatever  be  its  external  relations  as  to  our  hunaan 
experience.  But  this  species  of  assumption,  on  th« 
largest  scale,  is  more  within  the  limits  of  credibility 
and  plausible  verisimilitude  when  applied  to  modes  of 
existence,  which,  after  all,  are  in  such  total  darkness 
to  us,  (the  limits  of  the  possible  being  so  undefined 
and  shadowy  as  to  what  can  or  cannot  exist,)  than  th«- 
very  slightest  liberties  taken  with  human  character,  oi 
with  those  principles  of  action,  motives,  and  feelings, 
upon  which  men  would  move  under  given  circumstan- 
ces, or  with  the  modes  of  action  which  in  common 
prudence  they  would  be  likely  to  adopt.  The  truth 
is,  that,  as  a  coherent  work  of  art,  the  Robbers  is 
indefensible ;  but,  however  monstrous  it  may  be  pro- 
nounced, it  possesses  a  power  to  agitate  and  convulse, 
which  will  always  obliterate  its  great  faults  to  the 
young,  and  to  all  whose  judgment  is  not  too  much 
developed.  And  the  best  apology  for  Schiller  is  found 
in  his  own  words,  in  recording  the  circumstances  and 
causes  under  which  this  anomalous  production  arose. 
'  To  escape,'  says  he,  '  from  the  formalities  of  a  disci- 
pline which  was  odious  to  my  heart,  I  sought  a  retreat 
'n  che  world  of  ideas  and  shadowy  possibilities,  while 
as  yet  I  knew  nothing  at  all  of  that  human  world 
from  which  I  was  harshly  secluded  by  iron  bars. 
Of  men,  the  actual  men  in  this  world '  below,  I  knew 
absolutely  nothing  at  the  time  when  I  composed  my 
Robbers.  Four  hundred  human  beings,  it  is  true, 
were  my  fellow-prisoners  in  this  abode ;  but  they  were 
mere  tautologies  and  reiterations  of  the  self-sama 
mechanic    creature,   and    like   so   many  plaster-casti 


SCHILLER.  503 

from  the  same  original  statue,  llius  situated,  of 
necessity  I  failed.  In  making  the  attempt,  my  chisel 
brought  out  a  monster,  of  which  [and  that  was 
fortunate]  the  world  had  no  type  or  resemblance  to 
show.' 

Meantime  this  demoniac  drama  produced  very  oopo- 
site  results  to  Schiller's  reputation.  Among  the  young 
men  of  Germany  it  was  received  mth  an  enthusiasm 
absolutely  unparalleled,  though  it  is  perfectly  untrue 
that  it  excited  some  persons  of  rank  and  splendid 
expectations  (as  a  current  fable  asserted)  to  imitate 
Charles  Moor  in  becoming  robbers.  On  the  othei 
hand,  the  play  was  of  too  powerful  a  cast  not  in  any 
case  to  have  alarmed  his  serenity  the  Duke  of  Wiir- 
temberg ;  for  it  argued  a  most  revolutionary  mind,  and 
the  utmost  audacity  of  self-will.  But  besides  this 
general  ground  of  censure,  there  arose  a  special  one,  in 
a  quarter  so  remote,  that  this  one  fact  may  serve  to 
evidence  the  extent  as  well  as  intensity  of  the  impres- 
sion made.  The  territory  of  the  Grisons  had  been 
called  by  Spiegelberg,  one  of  the  robbers,  '  The  Thief's 
Athens.'  Upon  this  the  magistrates  of  that  country 
presented  a  complaint  to  the  duke  ;  and  his  highness 
having  cited  Schiller  to  his  presence,  and  severely 
reprimanded  him,  issued  a  decree  that  this  dangerous 
young  student  should  henceforth  confine  himself  to  his 
medical  studies. 

The  persecution  which  followed  exhibits  such  extra- 
rdinary  exertions  of  despotism,  even  for  that  land  of 
'irresponsible  power,  that  we  must  presume  the  duke  to 
have  relied  more  upon  the  hold  which  he  had  upon 
Scniller  through  his  affection  for  parents  so  absolutely 
dependent  on  his  highness's  power,  than  upon    saxj 


504  SCHILLKR. 

taws,  good  or  bad,  which  he  could  have  pleaded  as  hli 
warrant.  Germany,  however,  thought  otherwise  of 
the  new  tragedy  than  the  serene  critic  of  Wurtemberg  : 
it  was  performed  with  vast  applause  at  the  neigh- 
boring city  of  Mannheim ;  and  thither,  under  a  moat 
excusable  interest  in  his  own  play,  the  young  poet 
clandestinely  went.  On  his  return  he  was  placed  under 
arrest.  And  soon  afterwards,  being  now  thoroughly 
disgusted,  and,  with  some  reason,  alarmed  by  the 
tyranny  of  the  duke,  Schiller  finally  eloped  to  Mann- 
heim, availing  himself  of  the  confusion  created  in 
Stutgard  by  the  visit  of  a  foreign  prince. 

At  Mannheim  he  lived  in  the  house  of  Dalberg,  a 
man  of  some  rank  and  of  sounding  titles,  but  in  Mann- 
heim known  chiefly  as  the  literary  manager  (or  what  is 
called  director)  of  the  theatre.  This  connection  aided 
in  determining  the  subsequent  direction  of  Schiller's 
talents ;  and  his  Fiesco,  his  Intrigue  and  Love,  his 
Don  Carlos,  and  his  Maria  Stuart,  followed  within  a 
short  period  of  years.  None  of  these  are  so  far  fret 
from  the  faults  of  the  Robbers  as  to  merit  a  separate 
notice ;  for  with  less  power,  they  are  almost  equally 
licentious.  Finally,  however,  he  brought  out  hia 
Wallenstein,  an  immortal  drama,  and,  beyond  all 
competition,  the  nearest  in  point  of  excellence  to  the 
dramas  of  Shakspeare.  The  position  of  the  characters 
of  Max  Piccolomini  and  the  Princess  Thekla  is  the 
finest  instance  of  what,  in  a  critical  sense,  is  called 
relief,  that  literature  offers.  Young,  innocent,  un» 
fortunate,  among  a  camp  of  ambitious,  guilty,  and 
blood-stained  men,  they  offer  a  depth  and  solemnity 
of  impression  which  is  equally  required  by  way  of 
tontrast  and  of  final  repose. 


8CHILLEB.  505 

From  Manuheim,  where  he  had  a  transient  love  affair 
with  Laura  Dalberg,  the  daughter  of  his  friend  the 
director,  Schiller  removed  to  Jena,  the  celebrated  uni- 
versity in  the  territory  of  Weimar.  The  Grand  Duke 
of  that  German  Florence  was  at  this  time  gathering 
around  him  the  most  eminent  of  the  German  intellects ; 
and  he  was  eager  to  enroll  Schiller  in  the  body  of  Kis 
professors.  In  1799  Schiller  received  the  chair  of 
civil  history ;  and  not  long  after  he  married  Miss 
Lengefeld,  with  whom  he  had  been  for  some  time 
acquainted.  In  1 803  he  was  ennobled  ;  that  is,  he 
was  raised  to  the  rank  of  gentleman,  and  entitled  to 
attach  the  prefix  of  Von  to  his  name.  His  income 
was  now  sufficient  for  domestic  comfort  and  respect- 
able independence ;  while  in  the  society  of  Goethe, 
Herder,  and  other  eminent  wits,  he  found  even  more 
relaxation  for  his  intellect,  than  his  intellect,  so  fer- 
vent and  so  self-sustained,  could  require. 

Meantime  the  health  of  Schiller  was  gradually  under- 
mined :  his  lungs  had  been  long  subject  to  attacks  of 
disease ;  and  the  warning  indications  which  constantly 
arose  of  some  deep-seated  organic  injuries  in  his  piil- 
monary  system  ought  to  have  put  him  on  his  guard  for 
some  years  before  his  death.  Of  all  men,  however,  it 
is  remarkable  that  Schiller  was  the  most  criminally 
negligent  of  his  health  ;  remarkable,  we  say,  because 
for  a  period  of  four  years  Schiller  had  applied  himself 
seriously  to  the  study  of  medicine.  The  strong  coffee, 
and  the  wine  which  he  drank,  may  not  have  been  so 
injurious  as  his  biographers  suppose  ;  but  his  habit  of 
Bitting  up  through  the  night,  and  defrauding  his  wasted 
frame  of  all  natural  and  restorative  sleep,  had  some- 
thing in  it  of  that  guilt  which  belongs  to  suicide.     On 


i06  BOHILLBB. 

the  9tli  of  May,  1805,  his  complaint  reached  its  crisia. 
Early  iu  the  morning  he  became  delirious  ;  at  noon  his 
delirium  abated ;  and  at  four  in  the  afternoon  he  fell 
into  a  gentle  unagitated  sleep,  from  which  he  soon 
awoke.  Conscious  that  he  now  stood  on  the  very 
edge  of  the  grave,  he  calmly  and  fervently  took  a  last 
farewell  of  his  friends.  At  six  in  the  evening  he  fell 
again  into  sleep,  from  which,  however,  he  again*  awoke 
once  more  to  utter  the  memorable  declaration,  '  that 
many  things  were  growing  plain  and  clear  to  his  un- 
derstanding.' After  this  the  cloud  of  sleep  again  set- 
tled upon  him  ;  a  sleep  which  soon  changed  into  the 
cloud  of  death. 

This  event  produced  a  profound  impression  through- 
out Germany.  The  theatres  were  closed  at  Weimar, 
and  the  funeral  was  conducted  with  public  honors. 
The  position  in  point  of  time,  and  the  peculiar  ser- 
vices of  Schiller  to  the  German  literature,  we  have 
already  stated :  it  remains  to  add,  that  in  person  he 
was  tall,  and  of  a  strong  bony  structure,  but  not 
■nuscular,  and  strikingly  lean.  His  forehead  was 
lofty,  his  nose  aquiline,  and  his  mouth  almost  of  Gre- 
cian beauty.  With  other  good  points  about  his  face, 
and  with  auburn  hair,  it  may  be  presumed  that  his 
whole  appearance  was  pleasing  and  impressive,  while 
in  latter  years  the  character  of  sadness  and  contempla- 
tive sensibility  deepened  the  impression  of  his  counte- 
;aance.  We  have  said  enough  of  his  intellectual  merit, 
which  places  him  in  our  judgment  at  the  head  of  the 
Trans-Rhenish  literature.  But  we  add  in  concluding, 
ttiat  Frederick  von  Schiller  was  something  more  thjui 
t  great  author ;  he  was  also  in  an  eminent  sense  a 


80HII.I.SS.  507 

jpreat  man ;  and  his  works  are  not  more  worthy  of  being 
studied  for  their  singular  force  and  originality,  than 
his  moral  character  from  its  nobility  and  aspiring 
grandeur. 


JOHN  PAUL  FREDERICK  RICHTER, 

Orasmebe,  Oct.  18,  1821. 
Mt  dear  F. 

YoTT  ask  me  to  direct  you  generally  in  your  choice 
of  German  authors  ;  secondly,  and  especially,  among 
those  authors  to  name  my  favorite.  In  such  an  ocean 
as  German  literature,  your  first  request  is  of  too  wide 
a  compass  for  a  letter ;  and  I  am  not  sorry  that,  by 
leaving  it  untouched,  and  reserving  it  for  some  future 
conversation,  I  shall  add  one  moment  (in  the  language 
of  dynamics)  to  the  attractions  of  friendship,  and  the 
local  attractions  of  my  residence  ;  —  insufficient,  as  it 
seems,  of  themselves,  to  draw  you  so  far  northwards 
from  London.  Come,  therefore,  dear  F.,  bring  thy 
ugly  countenance  to  the  lakes  ;  and  I  will  engraft  such 
German  youth  and  vigor  on  thy  English  trunk,  that 
hencefor wards  thou  shalt  bear  excellent  fruit.  I  sup- 
pose, F.,  you  know  that  the  golden  pippin  is  now 
almost,  if  not  quite,  extinct  in  England  :  and  why  ? 
Clearly  from  want  of  some  exotic,  but  congenial  inoc- 
iJation.  So  it  is  with  literatures  of  whatsoever  land  : 
unless  crossed  by  some  other  of  different  breed,  they 
ill  tend  to  superannuation.  Thence  comes  it  that  the 
French  literature  is  now  in  the  last  stage  of  phthisis 
—  dotage  —  palsy,  or  whatever  image  will  best  expresi 


JOHN    PAUL    FREDERICK    RICHTEK.  509 

ihe  most  abject  state  of  senile  —  (senile  ?  no  !  of  anile) 
—  imbecility.  Its  constitution,  as  you  well  know,  was, 
h  its  best  days,  marrowless  and  without  nerve ;  its 
youth  without  hope,  and  its  manhood  without  dignit} . 
For  it  is  remarkable,  that  to  the  French  people  only 
of  all  nations  that  have  any  literature  at  all,  has  it 
been,  or  can  it  be,  justly  objected — that  they  have 
'  no  paramount  book ;  '  none,  that  is  to  say,  which 
stands  out  as  a  monument  adequately  representative 
of  the  intellectual  power  of  a  whole  nation ;  none 
which  has  attested  its  own  power  by  influencing  the 
modes  of  thinking,  acting,  educating,  through  a  long 
track  of  centuries.  They  have  no  book  on  which  the 
national  mind  has  adequately  acted  ;  none,  which  has 
re-acted,  for  any  great  end,  upon  the  national  mind. 
We  English  have  mighty  authors,  almost,  I  might 
say,  almighty  authors,  in  whom  (to  speak  by  a  scho- 
lastic term)  the  national  mind  is  contained  eminenter , 
that  is,  virtually  contained  in  its  principles  :  and  recip- 
rocally, these  abstracts  of  the  English  mind  continue, 
in  spite  of  many  counteracting  forces,  to  mould  and 
modulate  the  national  tone  of  thought ;  I  do  not  say 
directly,  for  you  will  object  that  they  are  not  suf- 
ficiently studied ;  but  indirectly,  inasmuch  as  the 
hundreds  in  every  generation,  who  influence  their  con- 
temporary millions,  have  themselves  derived  an  origi- 
nal influence  from  these  books.  The  planet  Jupiter, 
according  to  the  speculations  of  a  great  German  phi- 
osopher,  is  just  now  coming  into  a  habitable  con- 
dition :  its  primeval  man  is,  perhaps,  now  in  his 
Paradise  :  the  history,  the  poetry,  the  woes  of  Jupiter; 
ire  now  in  their  cradle.  Suppose,  then,  that  this 
Jovian  man  were   allowed   tc   come   down   upon    out 


510  JOHN    PAUL    FREDERICK     RICHTER. 

earth,  to  take  an  inquest  among  us,  and  to  call  uf 
—  nation  by  nation  —  to  a  solemn  audit  on  the  ques- 
tion  of  our  intellectual  efforts  and  triumphs.  What 
could  the  earth  say  for  herself?  For  our  parts,  we 
should  take  him  into  Westminster  Abbey  :  and  stand- 
ing upon  the  ancestral  dust  of  England,  we  should 
present  him  with  two  volumes  —  one  containing  Ham- 
let, Lear,  and  Othello ;  the  other  containing  Paradise 
Lost.  This,  we  should  say,  this  is  what  we  have 
achieved  :  these  are  our  Pyramids.  But  what  could 
France  present  him  ?  and  where  ?  Why,  her  best 
offering  must  be  presented  in  a  Boudoir :  the  impu- 
dence even  of  a  Frenchman  would  not  dare  to  connect 
the  sanctities  of  religious  feeling  with  any  book  in 
his  language  :  the  wildest  vanity  could  not  pretend 
to  show  the  correlate  of  Paradise  Lost.  To  speak  in 
a  language  suitable  to  a  Jovian  %'isitor,  that  is,  in  the 
language  of  astronomy,  our  books  would  appear  to 
him  as  two  heavenly  bodies  of  the  first  magnitude, 
whose  period,  the  cycle  and  the  revolution  of  whose 
orbit,  were  too  vast  to  be  calculated :  whilst  the  very 
best  of  France  could  be  regarded  as  no  more  than 
satellites,  fitted  to  move  about  some  central  body  of 
.insignificant  size.  Now  whence  comes  this  poverty 
of  the  French  literature  ?  Manifestly  hence,  that  it  is 
too  intensely  steeped  in  French  manners  to  admit  of 
any  influences  from  without :  it  has  rejected  all  alli- 
ance with  exotic  literature  ;  and  like  some  royal  fami- 
lies, or  like  a  particular  valley  in  this  county,  from 
Intermarrying  too  exclusively  in  their  own  narrow 
nrcle,  it  is  now  on  its  last  legs ;  and  will  soon  go  out 
like  a  farthing  rushlight. 

Having  this  horrid  example  before  our  eyes,  whar 


JOHN    PAUL    FREDERICK    RICHTEB.  511 

ihould  we  English  do  ?  Why,  evidently  we  should 
cultivate  an  intercourse  with  that  literature  of  Europe 
which  has  most  of  a  juvenile  constitution.  Now  thai 
is  beyond  all  doubt  the  German.  I  do  not  so  much 
insist  on  the  present  excellence  of  the  German  litera- 
ture (though,  poetry  apart,  the  current  literature  of 
Germany  appears  to  me  by  much  the  best  in  Europe)  : 
what  weighs  most  with  me  is  the  promise  and  assu- 
rance of  future  excellence  held  out  by  the  originality 
md  masculine  strength  of  thought  which  has  moulded 
the  German  mind  since  the  time  of  Kant.  Whatever 
be  thought  of  the  existing  authors,  it  is  clear  that 
a  mighty  power  has  been  at  work  in  the  German  mind 
since  the  French  Revolution,  which  happily  coincided 
in  point  of  time''^  with  the  influence  of  Kant's  great 
work.  Change  of  any  kind  was  good  for  Germany. 
One  truth  was  clear  —  Whatever  was,  was  bad.  And 
the  evidence  of  this  appears  on  the  face  of  the  litera- 
ture. Before  1789,  good  authors  were  rare  in  Ger- 
many :  since  then,  they  are  so  numerous,  that  in  any 
sketch  of  their  literature  all  individual  notice  becomes 
impossible  :  you  must  confine  yourself  to  favorite  au- 
thors, or  notice  them  by  classes.  And  this  leads  me 
to  your  question  —  Who  is  my  favorite  author  —  My 
answer  is,  that  I  have  three  favorites  :  and  those  are 
Kant,  Schiller,  and  John  Paul  Richter.  But  setting 
Kant  aside,  as  hardly  belonging  to  the  literature,  in 
the  true  meaning  of  that  word,  —  I  have,  you  see, 
two.  In  what  respect  there  is  any  affinity  between 
them,  I  will  notice  before  I  conclude.  For  the  pres- 
ent, I  shall  observe  on'y,  that  in  the  case  of  Schiller, 
I  love  his  works  chiefly  because  I  venerate  the  mem- 
»ry  of  the  man  :    whereas,  in  the  case  of  Richter,  my 


512  JOHN    PAUL    FREDEKICK    KICHTER. 

venemtion  and  afifection  for  the  man  is  founded  wholly 
on  my  knowledge  of  his  works.  This  distinction  will 
point  out  Richter  as  the  most  eligible  author  for  youi 
present  purpose.  In  point  of  originality,  indeed, 
there  cannot  arise  a  question  between  the  pretension* 
of  Richter  and  those  of  any  other  German  authoi 
whatsoever.  He  is  no  man's  representative  but  hi« 
own ;  nor  do  I  think  he  will  ever  have  a  successor. 
Of  his  style  of  writing,  it  may  be  said,  with  an  em- 
phatic and  almost  exclusive  propriety,  that  except  it 
proceeds  in  a  spirit  of  perfect  freedom,  it  cannot 
exist ;  unless  moving  from  an  impulse  self-derived,  it 
cannot  move  at  all.  What  then  is  his  style  of  writ- 
ing ?  What  are  its  general  characteristics  ?  These  I 
will  endeavor  to  describe  with  sufficient  circumstanti- 
ality to  meet  your  present  wants  :  premising  only  that 
I  call  him  frequently  John  Paul,  without  adding  his 
surname,  both  because  aU  Germany  gives  him  that 
Appellation  as  an  expression  of  afifection  for  his  person, 
and  because  he  has  himself  sometimes  assumed  it  in 
the  title-pages  of  his  works. 

First.  The  characteristic  distinction  of  Paul  Rich- 
.er  amongst  German  authors,  I  will  venture  to  add 
amongst  modem  authors  generally,  is  the  two-headed 
power  which  he  possesses  over  the  pathetic  and  the 
humorous  :  or,  rather,  let  me  say  at  once,  what  I  have 
often  felt  to  be  true,  and  could  (I  think)  at  a  fitting 
opportunity  prove  to  be  so,  this  power  is  not  two- 
headed,  but  a  one-headed  Janus  with  two  faces :  — 
the  pathetic  and  the  humorous  are  but  dififerent  phaset 
of  the  same  orb  ;  they  assist  each  other,  melt  indis* 
eernibly  into  each  other,  and  often  shine  each  through 
lach  like  layers  of  colored  crystals  placed  one  behino 


JOHN    PAUL    FEEDKUICK    EICHIEfi.  51.^ 

mother.  Take,  as  an  illustration,  Mrs.  Quicklj's  ac- 
oount  of  Falstaff's  death  :  —  here  there  were  three 
things  to  be  accomplished  ;  first,  the  death  of  a  human 
being  was  to  be  described  ;  of  necessity,  therefore,  ta 
be  described  pathetically :  for  death  being  one  of 
those  events  which  call  up  the  pure  generalities  of 
human  nature,  and  remove  to  the  background  all  indi- 
vidualities, whether  of  life  or  character,  the  mind 
would  not  in  any  case  endure  to  have  it  treated  with 
levity :  so  that,  if  any  circumstances  of  humor  are 
introduced  by  the  poetic  painter,  they  must  be  such  as 
will  blend  and  fall  into  harmony  with  the  ruling  pas- 
sion of  the  scene  :  and,  by  the  way,  combining  it  with 
the  fact,  that  humorous  circumstances  often  have  been 
introduced  into  death-bed  scenes,  both  actual  and  im- 
aginary, —  this  remark  of  itself  yields  a  proof  that 
there  is  a  humor  which  is  in  alliance  with  pathos. 
How  else  could  we  have  borne  the  jests  of  Sir  Thomas 
More  after  his  condemnation,  which,  as  jests,  would 
have  been  unseasonable  from  anybody  else :  but  being 
felt  in  him  to  have  a  root  in  his  character,  they  take 
the  dignity  of  humorous  traits  ;  and  do,  in  fact,  deep- 
en the  pathos.  So  again,  mere  naivete,  or  archness, 
when  it  is  felt  to  flow  out  of  the  cheerfulness  of  re- 
.Ignation,  becomes  humorous,  and  at  the  same  time 
becomes  pathetic  :  as,  for  instance.  Lady  Jane  Grey'p 
remark  on  the  scaffold  —  '  I  have  but  a  little  neck,' 
&c.  But  to  return :  the  death  of  Falstaff,  as  the 
ieath  of  a  man,  was,  in  the  first  place,  to  be  described 
with  pathos,  and  if  with  humor,  no  otherwise  than  aa 
the  one  could  be  reconciled  with  the  other  :  but,  2d, 
It  was  the  death  not  only  of  a  man,  but  also  of  8 
^alstaff ;  and  we  could  no*  but  require  that  the  de 
33 


514  JOHN    PAUL    FREDEKICK    BICHTER. 

scription  should  revive  the  image  and  features  of  so 
memorable  a  character  ;  if  not,  why  describe  it  at  all  ? 
The  understanding  would  as  little  bear  to  forget  that 
it  was  the  death-bed  of  a  Falstaff,  as  the  heart  and 
affections  to  forget  that  it  was  the  death-bed  of  a 
fellow-creature.  Lastly,  the  description  is  given,  not 
by  the  poet  speaking  in  his  own  universal  language, 
but  by  Mrs.  Quickly,  —  a  character  as  individually 
portrayed,  and  as  well  known  to  us,  as  the  subject  of 
her  description.  Let  me  recapitulate  :  1st,  it  was  to 
be  pathetic,  as  relating  to  a  man  :  2d,  humorous,  as 
relating  to  Falstaff :  3d,  humorous  in  another  style,  aia 
coming  from  Mrs.  Quickly.  These  were  difficulties 
rather  greater  than  those  of  levelling  hills,  filling  up 
valleys,  and  arranging  trees,  in  picturesque  groups  : 
yet  Capability  Brown  was  allowed  to  exclaim,  on  sur- 
veying a  conquest  of  his  in  this  walk  of  art  —  '  Ay  ! 
none  but  your  Browns  and  your  G —  Almighties, 
can  do  such  things  as  these.'  Much  more  then  might 
this  irreverent  speech  be  indulged  to  the  gratitude  of 
our  veneration  for  Shakspeare,  on  witnessing  such  tri- 
umphs of  his  art.  The  simple  words  — '  and  a  bab- 
bled of  green  fields,'  I  should  imagine,  must  have 
been  read  by  many  a  thousand  with  tears  and  smiles 
at  the  same  instant ;  I  mean,  connecting  them  with  a 
previous  knowledge  of  Falstaff  and  of  Mrs.  Quickly. 
Such  then  being  demonstrably  the  possibility  of  blend- 
ing, or  fusing,  as  it  were,  the  elements  of  pathos  and 
of  humor  —  and  composing  out  of  their  union  a  third 
metal  sui  generis,  (as  Corinthian  brass,  you  know,  is 
•aid  to  have  been  the  product  of  all  other  metals, 
from  the  confluence  of  melted  statutes,  &c.,  at  the 
burning  of  Corinth,)  —  I  cannot  but  consider  John  Paa 


JOHN    PAUL    FREDERICK    RICHTEB.  515 

Richter  as  by  far  the  most  eminent  artist  in  tbal  waj 
since  the  time  of  Shakspeare.  What !  you  will  say, 
gtbdter  than  Sterne?  —  I  answer  yes,  to  my  thinking; 
and  I  could  give  some  arguments  and  illustrations  iu 
support  of  this  judgment.  But  I  am  not  unxious  to 
establish  my  own  preference,  as  founded  on  anyvning 
of  better  authority  than  my  idiosyncrasy,  or  more 
permanent,  if  you  choose  to  think  so,  than  my  own 
caprice. 

Second.  Judge  as  you  will  on  this  last  point,  that 
is,  on  the  comparative  pretensions  of  Sterne  and  Rich- 
ter to  the  spolia  opima  in  the  fields  of  pathos  and  of 
humor ;  yet  in  one  pretension  he  not  only  leaves 
Sterne  at  an  infinite  distance  in  the  rear,  but  reaUy, 
for  my  part,  I  cease  to  ask  who  it  is  that  he  leaves  be- 
hind him,  for  I  begin  to  think  with  myself,  who  it  is 
that  he  approaches.  If  a  man  could  reach  Venus  or 
Mercury,  we  should  not  say  he  has  advanced  to  a 
great  distance  from  the  eai-th  :  we  should  say,  he  is 
very  near  to  the  sun.  So  also,  if  in  anything  a  man 
approaches  Shakspeare,  or  does  but  remind  us  of  him, 
all  other  honors  are  swallowed  up  in  that :  a  relation 
of  inferiority  to  him  is  a  more  enviable  distinction 
than  all  degrees  of  superiority  to  others,  the  rear  of 
his  splendors  a  more  eminent  post  than  the  supreme 
station  in  the  van  of  all  others.  I  have  already 
mentioned  one  quality  of  excellence,  viz.  the  inter- 
penetration**  of  the  humorous  and  the  pathetic,  com- 
mon to  Shakspeare  and  John  Paul :  but  this,  apart 
from  its  quantity  or  degree,  implies  no  more  of  a  par- 
ticipation in  Shakspearian  excellence,  than  the  posses- 
lion  of  wit,  judgment,  good  sense,  &c.  which,  in  some 
^eyree  or  other,  must  be  common  vC  all  authors  of  any 


51G  ;oHN    PAUL    FREDERICK     RICHTER. 

merit  at  all.  Thus  far  I  have  already  said,  that  1 
would  not  contest  the  point  of  precedence  with  the 
admirers  of  Sterne  :  but,  in  the  claim  I  now  advance 
for  Richter,  which  respects  a  question  of  degree,  I  can- 
not allow  of  any  competition  at  all  from  that  quarter. 
What  then  is  it  that  I  claim  ?  —  Briefly,  an  activity  of 
understanding,  so  restless  and  indefatigable  that  all 
attempts  to  illustrate,  or  express  it  adequately  by 
images  borrowed  from  the  natural  world,  from  the 
motions  of  beasts,  birds,  insects,  &c.  from  the  leaps  of 
tigers  or  leopards,  from  the  gambolling  and  tumbling 
of  kittens,  the  antics  of  monkeys,  or  the  running  of 
antelopes  and  ostriches,  &c.  are  baffled,  confounded, 
and  made  ridiculous  by  the  enormous  and  over- 
mastering superiority  of  impression  left  by  the  thing 
illustrated.  The  rapid,  but  uniform  motions  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  serve  well  enough  to  typify  the  grand 
and  continuous  motions  of  the  Miltonic  mind.  But 
the  wild,  giddy,  fantastic,  capricious,  incalculable, 
springing,  vaulting,  tumbling,  dancing,  waltzing,  capri- 
oling, pirouetting,  skyrocketing  of  the  chamois,  the 
harlequin,  the  Vestris,  the  storm-loving  raven  —  the 
raven  ?  no,  the  lark,  (for  often  he  ascends  '  singing 
up  to  heaven's  gates,'  but  like  the  lark  he  dwells  upon 
the  earth,)  in  short,  if  the  Proteus,  the  Ariel,  the  Mer- 
cury, the  monster  —  John  Paul,  can  be  compared  to 
nothing  in  heaven  or  earth,  or  the  waters  under  the 
earth,  except  to  the  motions  of  the  same  faculty  aa 
existing  in  Shakspeare.  Perhaps,  meteorology  may 
hereafter  furnish  us  with  some  adequate  analogon  ox 
adumbration  of  its  multitudinous  acti\-ity  :  hereafter, 
observe :  for,  as  to  lightning,  or  anything  we  know  a. 
oreeent,  it  pants  after  them  '  in  Tain,'  in  company  with 


JOHN    PAUL    FHKDKRICK     HICHXElt.  517 

ihat  pursy  old  gentleman  Time,'-'*  as  painted  by  Dr. 
Johnson.  To  say  the  truth,  John  Paul's  intellect  — 
his  faculty  of  catching  at  a  glance  all  the  relations  of 
objects,  both  the  grand,  the  lovely,  the  ludicrous, 
and  the  fantastic,  —  is  painfully  and  almost  morbidly 
active :  there  is  no  respite,  no  repose,  allowed  —  no, 
not  for  a  moment,  in  some  of  his  works,  not  whilst 
you  can  say  Jack  Robinson.  And,  by  the  way,  a  sort 
of  namesake  of  this  Mr.  Robinson,  viz.  Jack-o'-the- 
lantern,  comes  as  near  to  a  semblance  of  John  Paul 
as  any  body  I  know.  Shakspeare  himself  has  given 
us  some  account  of  Jack :  and  I  assure  you,  that  the 
same  account  will  serve  for  Jack  Paul  Richter.  One 
i)f  his  books  ( Vorschule  der  Aesthetik)  is  absolutely  so 
surcharged  with  quicksilver,  that  I  expect  to  see  it 
leap  off  the  table  as  often  as  it  is  laid  there ;  and 
therefore,  to  prevent  accidents,  I  usually  load  it  with 

the   works   of  our   good   friend  Esq.  and 

F.  R.  S.  In  fact,  so  exuberant  is  this  perilous  gas  of 
wit  in  John  Paul,  that,  if  his  works  do  not  explode,  — 
at  any  rate,  I  think  John  Paul  himself  will  blow  up 
one  of  these  days.  It  must  be  dangerous  to  bring  a 
candle  too  near  him :  many  persons,  especially  half- 
pay  officers,  have  lately  '  gone  off,''**  by  inconsiderately 
blowing  out  their  bed-candle.  They  were  loaded  with 
a  different  sort  of  spirit,  it  is  true  :  but  I  am  sure  there 
2an  be  none  more  inflammable  than  that  of  John  Paul ! 
To  be  serious,  however,  and  to  return  from  chasing 
his  Will-o'-thc^-wisp,  there  cannot  be  a  more  valuable 
■  ndowment  to  a  writer  of  inordinate  sensibility,  than 
his  inordinate  agility  of  the  understanding ;  the 
tctive  faculty  balances  th°  passive  ;  and  without  such 
balance,  there  is  great  risk  of  falling  into  a  sicklj 


518  JOHX    PaUI,    FUEJ)KK1CK    KICHTEU. 

tone  of  maudlin  sentimentality,  fiom  which  Steme 
cannot  be  pronounced  wholly  free,  —  and  still  less  a 
later  author  of  pathetic  tales,  whose  name  I  omit.  By 
the  way,  I  must  observe,  that  it  is  this  fiery,  meteoric, 
scintillating,  coruscating  power  of  John  Paul,  which  is 
the  true  foundation  of  his  frequent  obscurity.  You 
will  find  that  he  is  reputed  the  most  difficult  of  all 
German  authors ;  and  many  Germans  are  so  little 
aware  of  the  true  derivation  of  this  difficulty,  that 
it  has  often  been  said  to  me,  as  an  Englishman, 
'  What !  can  you  read  John  Paul  ?  '  —  meaning  to  say, 
can  you  read  such  difficult  German  ?  Doubtless,  in 
some  small  proportion,  the  mere  language  and  style 
are  responsible  for  his  difficulty  :  and,  in  a  sense  some- 
what different,  applying  it  to  a  mastery  over  the  lan- 
guage in  which  he  writes,  the  expression  of  Quintilian 
in  respect  to  the  student  of  Cicero  may  be  transferred 
to  the  student  of  John  Paul :  — '  Ille  se  profecisse 
sciat,  cui  Cicero  valde  placebit : '  he  may  rest  assured 
that  he  has  made  a  competent  progress  in  the  German 
language  who  can  read  Paul  Richter.  Indeed  he  is  a 
Bort  of  proof  author  in  this  respect ;  a  man,  who  can 
'  construe '  him,  cannot  be  stopped  by  any  difficulties 
purely  verbal.  But,  after  all,  these  verbal  obscurities 
are  but  the  necessary  resiJt  and  product  of  his  style 
of  thinking ;  the  nimbleness  of  his  transitions  often 
makes  him  elliptical :  the  vast  expansion  and  discur- 
Biveness  in  his  range  of  notice  and  observation,  carries 
him  into  every  department  and  nook  of  human  life,  of 
Bcience,  of  art,  and  of  literature ;  whence  comes  a 
proportionably  extensive  vocabulary,  and  a  prodigious 
compass  of  idiomatic  phraseology :  and  finally,  the 
fineness,    and    evanescent    brillianc)-   of    his    obliqut 


JOHN    PAUL    FREDEKICK    RICHTEK.  519 

^ancea  and  surface-skimmering  allusions,  often  fling 
but  half  a  meaning  on  the  mind  ;  and  one  is  puzzled 
to  make  out  its  complement.  Hence  it  is,  that  is  to 
say,  from  his  mode  of  presenting  things,  his  lyrical 
style  of  connection,  and  the  prodigious  fund  of  knowl- 
edge on  which  he  draws  for  his  illustrations  and  his 
images,  that  his  obscurity  arises.  And  these  are 
causes  which  must  affect  his  own  countrymen  no 
less  than  foreigners.  Further  than  as  these  causes 
must  occasionally  produce  a  corresponding  difficulty 
of  diction,  I  know  of  no  reason  why  an  Englishman 
should  be  thought  specially  concerned  in  his  obscurity, 
or  less  able  to  find  his  way  through  it  than  any  Ger- 
man. But  just  the  same  mistake  is  commonly  made 
about  Lycophron  :  he  is  represented  as  the  most  diffi- 
cult of  all  Greek  authors.  Meantime,  as  far  as  lan- 
guage is  concerned,  he  is  one  of  the  easiest :  —  some 
peculiar  words  he  has,  I  acknowledge,  but  it  is  not 
single  words  that  constitute  verbal  obscurity ;  it  is  the 
construction,  synthesis,  composition,  arrangement  and 
involution  of  words,  which  only  can  obstruct  the 
reader :  now  in  these  parts  of  style  Lycophron  is 
remarkably  lucid.  Where  then  lies  his  reputed  dark- 
ness ?  Purely  in  this,  —  that,  by  way  of  coloring  the 
style  with  the  sullen  hues  of  prophetic  vision,  Cassan- 
dia  is  made  to  describe  all  those  on  whom  the  fates 
of  Troy  hinged,  by  enigmatic  periphrases,  oftentimes 
drawn  from  the  most  obscure  incidents  in  their  lives  : 
just  as  if  I  should  describe  Cromwell  by  the  expres- 
lion,  '  unfortunate  tamer  of  horses,'  because  he  once 
Aearly  broke  his  neck  in  Hyde-Park,  when  driving 
J<)ur-in-hand  ;  or  should  describe  a  noble  lord  of  the 
ast  century  as  '  the  roaster  of  men,'  because,  when 


520  JOHN    PAUL    FREDERICK    RICHTEH. 

member  of  the  Hell-fire-club,  he  actually  tied  a  pooi 
man  to  the  spit ;  and  having  spitted  him,  proceeded  to 
roast  him.^ 

Third.  You  will  naturally  collect  from  the  account 
here  given  of  John  Paul's  activity  of  understanding 
and  fancy,  that  over  and  above  his  humor,  he  musl 
have  an  overflowing  opulence  of  wit.  In  fact  he  has. 
On  this  earth  of  ours,  (I  know  nothing  about  the  books 
in  Jupiter,  where  Kant  has  proved  that  the  authors 
will  be  far  abler  than  any  poor  Terrae  Filius,  such  as 
Shakspeare  or  Milton,)  but  on  this  poor  earth  of  ours 
I  am  acquainted  with  no  book  of  such  unintermitting 
and  brilliant  \snt  as  his  Vorschule  der  Aeslhetik;  it 
glitters  like  the  stars  on  a  frosty  night ;  or  like   the 

stars  on  Count  's  coat ;  or  like  the  aruQi6nov  riXaofiu, 

the  multitudinous  laughing  of  the  ocean  under  the 
glancing  lights  of  sun-beams  ;  or  like  a  feu  dejoie  of 
fire- works  :  in  fact,  John  Paul's  works  are  the  galaxy 
of  the  German  literary  firmament.  I  defy  a  man  to  lay 
his  hand  on  that  sentence  which  is  not  vital  and  ebullient 
with  wit.  What  is  wit  ?  We  are  told  that  it  is  the 
perception  of  resemblances  ;  whilst  the  perception  of 
differences,  we  are  requested  to  believe,  is  reserved  for 
another  faculty.  Very  profound  distinctions  no  doubt, 
but  very  senseless  for  all  that.  I  shall  not  here  at- 
tempt a  definition  of  wit :  but  I  will  just  mention 
what  I  conceive  to  be  one  of  the  distinctions  between 
wit  and  humor,  viz.  —  that  whilst  wit  is  a  purely  in- 
tellactual  thing,  into  every  act  of  the  humorous  mood 
there  is  an  influx  of  the  thoi  al  nature  :  rays,  direct  or 
refracted,  from  the  will  and  the  affections,  from  the  dis» 
position  and  the  temperament,  enter  into  all  humor 
%nd  thence  it  is,  that  humor  is  of  a  diffusive  quality 


JOHN    PAUL    FREDERICK    KICHTER  521 

pen ading  an  entire  course  of  thoughts  ;  whilst  wit  — 
because  it  has  no  existence  apart  from  certain  logical 
relations  of  a  thought  which  are  definitely  assignable, 
and  can  be  counted  even,  is  always  punctually  concen- 
trated within  the  circle  of  a  few  words.  On  this 
account,  I  would  not  advise  you  to  read  those  of  John 
Paul's  works  which  are  the  wittiest :  but  those  which 
are  more  distinguished  for  their  humor.  You  will 
thus  see  more  of  the  man.  In  a  future  letter  I  will 
Bend  you  a  list  of  the  whole  distributed  into  classes. 

P'ourthly  and  finally.  Let  me  tell  you  what  it  ib 
that  has  fixed  John  Paul  in  my  esteem  and  affection. 
Did  you  ever  look  into  that  sickening  heap  of  abor- 
tions —  the  Ireland  forgeries  ?  In  one  of  these  (Deed 
of  Trust  to  John  Hemynges)  he  makes  Shakspeare 
say,  as  his  reason  for  having  assigned  to  a  friend  such 
and  such  duties  usually  confided  to  lawyers — that  he 
had  '  founde  muche  wickednesse  amongste  those  of 
the  lawe.'  On  this,  Mr.  Malone,  whose  indignation 
was  justly  roused  to  Shakspeare's  name  borrowed  to 
countenance  such  loathsome  and  stupid  vulgarity, 
expresses  himself^  with  much  feeling  :  and  I  confess 
that,  for  my  part,  that  passage  alone,  without  the 
innumerable  marks  of  grossest  forgery  which  stare 
upon  one  in  every  word,  would  have  been  quite  suffi- 
cient to  expose  the  whole  as  a  base  and  most  childish 
imposture.  For,  so  far  was  Shakspeare  from  any 
capability  of  leaving  behind  him  a  malignant  libel  on 
a  whole  body  of  learned  men,  that,  among  all  writers 
Df  every  age,  he  stands  forward  as  the  one  who  looked 
aaost  benignantly,  and  with  the  most  fraternal  eye, 
upon  all  the  ways  of  men,  however  weak  or  foolish. 
From  every  sort  of  \'ice  and  infirmity  he  drew  nutti- 


522  JOHX    PAUL    KKE1)ERICK    RICHTEE. 

nient  from  his  philosophic  mind.  It  is  to  the  honor 
of  John  Paul,  that  in  this,  as  in  other  respects,  he 
constantly  reminds  me  of  Shakspeare.  Everywhere  a 
spirit  of  kindness  prevails  :  his  satire  is  eveiywhere 
playful,  delicate,  and  clad  in  smiles ;  never  bitter, 
scornful,  or  malignant.  But  this  is  not  all.  I  could 
produce  many  passages  from  Shakspeare,  which  show 
that,  if  his  anger  was  ever  roused,  it  was  against  the 
abuses  of  the  time  :  not  mere  political  abuses,  but 
those  that  had  a  deeper  root,  and  dishonored  human 
naturd.  Here  again  the  resemblance  holds  in  John 
Paul ;  and  this  is  the  point  in  which  I  said  that  ) 
would  notice  a  bond  of  affinity  between  him  and 
Schiller.  Both  were  intolerant  haters  of  ignoble  things^ 
though  placable  towards  the  ignoble  men.  Both 
yearned,  according  to  their  diiferent  temperaments,  for 
a  happier  state  of  things :  I  mean  for  human  nature 
generally,  and,  in  a  political  sense,  for  Germany.  To 
his  latest  years,  Schiller,  when  suffering  under  bodily 
decay  and  anguish,  was  an  earnest  contender"'*'  for 
whatever  promised  to  elevate  human  nature,  and  bore 
emphatic  witness  against  the  evils  of  the  time.  John 
Paul,  who  still  lives,  is  of  a  gentler  nature  :  but  hia 
aspirations  tend  to  the  same  point,  though  expressed 
in  a  milder  and  more  hopeful  spirit.  With  all  this, 
however,  they  give  a  rare  lesson  on  the  manner  of  con- 
ducting such  a  cause :  for  you  will  nowhere  find  that 
they  take  any  indecent  liberties,  of  a  personal  sort, 
with  those  princes  whose  governments  they  most 
dbhorred.  Though  safe  enough  from  their  vengeance, 
they  never  forgot  in  their  indignation,  as  patriots  ano 
»s  philosophers,  the  respect  due  to  the  rank  of  others, 
r  *rv  ♦luMTisflvpa  as  fsphnlars.  and  the  favorites  of  theii 


ANALECTS    FROM     UICHTER.  '    523 

jountry.  Some  other  modern  authors  of  Germany 
wiay  be  great  writers :  but  Frederick  Schiller  and  John 
Paul  Richter  I  shall  always  view  with  the  feelings  due 
to  great  men. 


ANALECTS    PROM    RICHTER 

THB  HAPPT   LIFK   OF   A   PARISH   PRIEST    IN   SWEDEN. 

Sweden  apart,  the  condition  of  a  parish  priest  is  in 
itself  sufficiently  happy :  in  Sweden,  then,  much  more 
BO.  There  he  enjoys  summer  and  winter  pure  and 
unalloyed  by  any  tedious  interruptions :  a  Swedish 
spring,  which  is  always  a  late  one,  is  no  repetition,  in  a 
lower  key,  of  the  harshness  of  winter,  but  anticipates, 
and  is  a  prelibation  of  perfect  summer,  —  laden  with 
blossoms,  —  radiant  with  the  lily  and  the  rose  :  inso- 
much, that  a  Swedish  summer  night  represents  im- 
plicitly one  half  of  Italy,  and  a  winter  night  one  half 
of  the  world  beside. 

I  will  begin  with  winter,  and  I  will  suppose  it  to  be 
Christmas.  The  priest,  whom  we  shall  imagine  to  be 
a  German,  and  summoned  from  the  southern  climate 
of  Germany  upon  presentation  to  the  church  of  a 
Swedish  hamlet  lying  in  a  high  polar  latitude,  rises  in 
iheerfulness  about  seven  o'ci'^ck  in  the  morning ;  and 
till  half  past  nine  he  burns  his  lamp.  At  nine  o'clock, 
\he  stars  are  still  shining,  and  the  unclouded  moot 
even  yet  longer.  This  prolongation  of  star-light  into 
■in  forenoon  is  to  him  delightful ;  for  he  is  a  German 


524  ANALKCTS    FROM    lllCHTEE. 

ar.d  has  a  sense  of  something  marvellous  in  a  st&rr]| 
forenoon.  Methinks,  I  behold  the  priest  and  his  flock 
moving  towards  the  church  with  lanterns  :  the  lights 
dispersed  amongst  the  crowd  connect  the  congregation 
into  the  appearance  of  sonr.e  domestic  group  or  larger 
household,  and  carry  the  priest  back  to  his  childisn 
years  during  the  winter  season  and  Christmas  matins. 
then  every  hand  bore  its  candle.  Arrived  at  the 
pulpit,  he  declares  to  his  audience  the  plain  truth, 
word  for  word,  as  it  stands  in  the  Gospel :  in  the 
presence  of  God,  all  intellectual  pretensions  are  called 
upon  to  be  silent ;  the  very  reason  ceases  to  be  reason- 
able ;  nor  is  anything  reasonable  in  the  sight  of  God 
but  a  sincere  and  upright  heart. 

Just  as  he  and  his  flock  are  issuing  from  the  church 
the  bright  Christmas  sun  ascends  above  the  horizon, 
and  shoots  his  beams  upon  their  faces.  The  old  men, 
who  are  numerous  in  Sweden,  are  all  tinged  with  the 
colors  of  youth  by  the  rosy  morning-lustre  ;  and  the 
priest,  as  he  looks  away  from  them  to  mother  earth  lying 
in  the  sleep  of  winter,  and  to  the  church-yard,  -where 
the  flowers  and  the  men  are  all  in  their  graves  together, 
might  secretly  exclaim  with  the  poet :  —  '  Upon  the 
dead  mother,  in  peace  and  utter  gloom,  are  reposing 
the  dead  children.  After  a  time,  uprises  the  everlast- 
ing sun  ;  and  the  mother  starts  up  at  the  summons  of 
the  heavenly  dawn  with  a  resurrection  of  her  ancient 
bloom  :  —  And  her  children  ?  —  Yes  .  but  they  must 
ivait  awhile.' 
At  home  ho  is  awaited  by  a  warm  study,  and  s 
long-levelled  rule  '  of  sunlight  upon  the  book-clcd 
i^all. 


A.NAi.i^olS    FKOAl    KICHXBB.  52i 

The  ai«3moon  he  spends  delightfully ;  for,  having 
before  him  such  perfect  flower-stand  of  pleasures,  he 
icarcely  knows  where  he  should  settle.  Supposing  it 
to  be  Christmas-day,  he  preaches  again :  he  preaches 
on  a  subject  which  calls  up  images  of  the  beauteous 
eastern-land,  or  of  eternity.  By  this  time,  twilight 
and  gloom  prevailed  through  the  church :  only  a 
couple  of  wax  lights  upon  the  altar  throw  wondrous 
and  mighty  shadows  through  the  aisles :  the  angel 
that  hangs  down  from  the  roof  above  the  baptismal 
font,  is  awoke  into  a  solemn  life  by  the  shadows  and 
the  rays,  and  seems  almost  in  the  act  of  ascension : 
through  the  windows,  the  stars  or  the  moon  are  be- 
ginning to  peer:  aloft,  in  the  pulpit,  which  is  now  hid 
in  ^loom,  the  priest  is  inflamed  and  possessed  by  the 
»acred  burthen  of  glad  tidings  wliich  he  is  announcing  : 
he  is  lost  and  insensible  to  all  besides ;  and  from 
amidst  the  darkness  which  surrounds  him,  he  pours 
down  his  thunders,  with  tears  and  agitation,  reasoning 
of  future  worlds,  and  of  the  heaven  of  heavens,  and 
whatsoever  else  can  most  powerfully  shake  the  heart 
and  the  afiections. 

Descending  from  his  pulpit  in  these  holy  fervors,  he 
now,  perhaps,  takes  a  walk  :  it  is  about  four  o'clock ; 
and  he  walks  beneath  a  sky  lit  up  by  the  shifting 
northern  lights,  that  to  his  eye  appear  but  an  Aurora 
striking  upwards  from  the  eternal  morning  of  the 
^outh,  or  as  a  forest  composed  of  saintly  thickets,  like 
the  fiery  bushes  of  Moses,  that  are  round  the  thione 
of  God. 

Thus,  if  it  be  the  afternoon  of  Christmas-day :  but, 
if  it  be  any  other  afternoon,  visitors,  perhaps,  come 
»nd  bring  their  well-bred,  grown-up  daughters ;  like 


526  ANALECTS     FKOM    KICHTEK. 

the  fashionable  world  in  London,  he  dines  at  sunset , 
that  is  to  say,  like  the  wn-fashionable  world  of  Lon- 
don, he  dines  at  two  o'clock ;  and  he  drinks  coffee  by 
moonlight ;  and  the  parsonage-house  becomes  an  en- 
chanted palace  of  pleasure  gleaming  with  twilight, 
starlight,  and  moonlight.  Or,  perhaps,  he  goes  over 
to  the  schoolmaster,  who  is  teaching  his  afternoon 
school :  there,  by  the  candlelight,  he  gathers  round 
his  knees  all  the  scholars,  as  if — being  the  children 
of  his  spiritual  children  —  they  must  therefore  be  hia 
own  grandchildren ;  and  with  delightful  words  he  wins 
their  attention,  and  pours  knowledge  into  their  docile 
hearts. 

All  these  pleasures  failing,  he  may  pace  up  and 
down  in  his  library  already,  by  three  o'clock,  gloomy 
with  twilight,  but  fitfully  enlivened  by  a  glowing  ^re, 
and  steadily  by  the  bright  moonlight ;  and  he  needs  do 
no  more  than  taste  at  every  turn  of  his  walk  a  little 
orange  meurmalade  —  to  call  up  images  of  beautiful 
Italy,  and  its  gardens,  and  orange  groves,  before  all 
his  five  senses,  and  as  it  were,  to  the  very  tip  of  his 
tongue.  Looking  at  the  moon,  he  will  not  fail  to 
recollect  that  the  very  same  silver  disk  hangs  at  the 
very  same  moment  between  the  branches  of  the  laurels 
in  Italy.  It  will  delight  him  to  consider  that  the 
^olian  harp,  and  the  lark,  and  indeed  music  of  all 
kinds,  and  the  stars,  and  children,  are  just  the  same 
in  hot  climates  and  in  cold.  And  when  the  post-boy, 
that  rides  in  with  news  from  Italy,  winds  his  horn 
through  the  hamlet,  and  with  a  few  simple  notes  raises 
up  on  the  frozen  window  of  his  study  a  vision  of 
tiowery  realms;  and  when  he  plays  with  treasured 
eaves  of  roses  and  of  lilies  from  some  departed  sum* 


aNALKCTS    from    RlCHTElt.  527 

nier,  oi  with  plumes  of  a  bird  of  paradise,  the  memorial 
of  some  distant  fr'cnd ;  v/hen  further,  his  heart  is 
moved  by  the  magnificent  sounds  of  Lady-day,  Sallad- 
season.  Cherry-time,  Trinity-Sundays,  the  rose  of  June, 
6cc.,  how  can  he  fail  to  forget  that  he  is  in  Sweden  by 
the  time  that  his  lamp  is  brought  in  ;  and  then,  indeed, 
he  will  be  somewhat  disconcerted  to  recognize  his 
study  in  what  had  now  shaped  itself  to  his  fancy  as  a 
room  in  some  foreign  land.  However,  if  he  would 
pursue  this  airy  creation,  he  need  but  light  at  his  lamp 
a  wax-candle-end,  to  gain  a  glimpse  through  the  whole 
evening  into  that  world  of  fashion  and  splendor,  from 
which  he  purchased  the  said  wax-candle-end.  For  I 
should  suppose,  that  at  the  court  of  Stockholm,  as 
elsewhere,  there  must  be  candle-ends  to  be  bought  of 
the  state-footmen. 

But  now,  after  the  lapse  of  half  a  year,  all  at  once 
there  strikes  upon  his  heart  something  more  beautiful 
than  Italy,  where  the  sun  sets  so  much  earlier  in  sum- 
mer-time than  it  does  at  our  Swedish  hamlet :  and 
what  is  that  7  It  is  the  longest  day,  with  the  rich 
freight  that  it  carries  in  its  bosom,  and  leading  by  the 
hand  the  early  dawn  blushing  with  rosy  light,  and 
melodious  with  the  carolling  of  larks  at  one  o'clock  in 
the  morning.  Before  two,  that  is,  at  sunrise,  the  ele- 
gant party  that  we  mentioned  last  winter  arrive  in  gay 
clothing  at  the  parsonage ;  for  they  are  bound  on  a 
little  excursion  of  pleasure  in  company  with  the  priest. 
At  two  o'clock  they  are  in  motion  ;  at  which  time  all 
the  flowers  are  glittering,  and  the  forests  are  gleaming 
with  the  mighty  light.  The  warm  sun  threatens  them 
with  no  storm  nor  thunder  showers :  for  both  are  rare 
u  Sweden.     The   priest,  in  common  with  the  rest  of 


^28  ANALECTS    FROM    RICHTEK. 

Jbe  company,  is  attired  in  the  costume  of  Sweden  ;  he 
wears  his  short  jacket  with  a  broad  scarf,  his  short 
cloak  above  that,  his  round  hat  with  floating  plumes, 
and  shoes  tied  with  bright  ribbons :  like  the  rest  of 
the  men,  he  resembles  a  Spanish  knight,  or  a  proven- 
pal,  or  other  man  of  the  south  ;  more  especially  when 
he  and  his  gay  company  are  seen  flying  through  the 
lofty  foliage  luxuriant  with  blossom,  that  within  so 
short  a  period  of  weeks  has  shot  forth  from  the  garden 
plots  and  the  naked  boughs. 

That  a  longest  day  like  this,  bearing  such  a  cornu- 
copia of  sunshine,  of  cloudless  ether,  of  buds  and  bells, 
of  blossoms  and  of  leisure,  should  pass  away  more 
rapidly  than  the  shortest,  —  is  not  difficult  to  suppose. 
As  early  as  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening  the  party 
breaks  up ;  the  sun  is  now  burning  more  gently  over 
the  half-closed  sleepy  flowers :  about  nine  he  has  miti- 
gated his  rays,  and  is  beheld  bathing  as  it  were  naked 
in  the  blue  depths  of  heaven :  about  ten,  at  which  hour 
the  company  reassemble  at  the  parsonage,  the  priest  ia 
deeply  moved,  for  throughout  the  hamlet,  though  the 
tepid  sun,  now  sunk  to  the  horizon,  is  still  shedding  a 
sullen  glow  upon  the  cottages  and  the  window-panes, 
everything  reposes  in  profoundest  silence  and  sleep ; 
the  birds  even  are  all  slumbering  in  the  golden  sum- 
mits of  the  woods :  and  at  last,  the  solitary  sun  him- 
self sets,  like  a  moon,  amidst  the  universal  quiet  of 
nature.  To  our  priest,  walking  in  his  romantic  dress. 
it  seems  as  though  rosy-colored  realms  were  laid  open, 
m  which  fairies  and  spirits  range ;  and  he  would 
scarcely  feel  an  emotion  of  wonder,  if,  in  this  hour  of 
golden  vision,  his  brother,  who  ran  away  in  childhood, 
should  suddenly  present  himself  as  one  alight'  ig  fiona 
«me  bloomins  heaven  of  enchantment. 


ANALECTS    FEOM    KICHTEH.  529 

Ths  priest  will  not  allow  his  company  to  depai't :  he 
detains  them  in  the  parsonage  garden,  —  where,  says 
he,  every  one  that  chooses  may  slumber  away  in  beau- 
tiful bowers  the  brief,  warm  hours  until  the  re-appear- 
ance of  the  sun.  This  proposal  is  generally  adopted : 
and  the  garden  is  occupied :  many  a  lovely  pair  are 
making  believe  to  sleep,  but,  in  fact,  are  holding  each 
other  by  the  hand.  The  happy  priest  walks  up  and 
down  through  the  parterres.  Coolness  comes,  and  a 
few  stars.  His  night- violets  and  gillyflowers  open  and 
breathe  out  their  powerful  odors.  To  the  north,  from 
the  eternal  morning  of  the  pole,  exhales  as  it  were  & 
golden  dawn.  The  priest  thinks  of  the  village  of  his 
childhood  far  away  in  Germany ;  he  thinks  of  the  life 
of  man,  his  hopes,  and  his  aspirations :  and  he  is  calm 
and  at  peace  with  himself.  Then  all  at  once  starts  up 
the  morning  sun  in  his  freshness.  Some  there  are 
La  the  garden  who  would  fain  confound  it  with  the 
evening  sun,  and  close  their  eyes  again  :  but  the  larks 
betray  all,  and  awaken  every  sleeper  from  bower  to 
hower. 

Then  again  begin  pleasure  and  morning  in  theil  pomp 
of  radiance  ;  and  almost  I  could  persuade  myself  to 
delineate  the  course  of  this  day  also,  though  it  differs 
from  its  predecessor  hardly  by  so  much  as  the  leaf  of 
a  rose-bud. 

DBKAJf   UPON   THB  UNIVERSE. 

I    HAD   been  reading  an   excellent   dissertation   of 

iCriJger's    upon    the   v^ld  vulgar   error  which   regards 

the  space  from  one  earth  and  sun  to  another  as  empty. 

Our  sun  toge';hor   with  all   its  planets  fills  only  the 

84 


530  ANALECTS    FEOM    RICHTKK. 

81,419,460,000,000,000th  part  of  the  whole  apace 
between  itself  and  the  next  solar  body.  Graciou* 
Heavens !  thought  I,  —  in  what  an  unfathomable 
iibyss  of  emptiness  were  this  universe  swallowed  uf 
and  lost,  if  all  were  void  and  utter  vacuity  except  the 
few  shining  points  of  dust  which  we  call  a  planetary 
system !  To  conceive  of  our  earthly  ocean  as  the 
abode  of  death  and  essentially  incapable  of  life,  and  of 
its  populous  islands  as  being  no  greater  than  snail- 
shells,  would  be  a  far  less  error  in  proportion  to  the 
compass  of  our  planet  than  that  which  attributes  emp- 
tiness to  the  great  mundane  spaces :  and  the  error 
would  be  far  less  if  the  marine  animals  were  to  ascribe 
life  and  fulness  exclusively  to  the  sea,  and  to  regard 
the  atmospheric  ocean  above  them  as  empty  and  un- 
tenanted. According  to  Herschel,  the  most  remote  of 
the  galaxies  which  the  telescope  discovers  lie  at  such 
«  distance  from  us,  that  their  light,  which  reaches  us 
at  this  day,  must  have  set  out  on  its  journey  two  mill- 
ions of  years  ago  ;  and  thus  by  optical  laws  it  is  pos- 
sible that  whole  squadrons  of  the  starry  hosts  may  be 
now  reaching  us  with  their  beams  which  have  them- 
selves perished  ages  ago.  Upon  this  scale  of  compu- 
tation for  the  dimensions  of  the  world,  what  heights 
and  depths  and  breadths  must  there  be  in  this  universe 
—  in  comparison  of  which  the  positive  universe  would 
be  itself  a  nihility,  were  it  crossed  —  pierced  —  and 
belted  about  by  so  illimitable  a  wilderness  of  nothing  ! 
But  is  it  possible  that  any  man  can  for  a  moment 
overlook  those  vast  forces  which  must  pervade  these 
Imaginary  deserts  with  eternal  surges  of  flux  and 
reflux,  to  make  the  very  paths  to  those  distant  starry 
coasts  voyageable  to  our  eyes  ?    Can  you  lock  up  in 


AXALFXTS    FEOM    RICHTEK.  531 

un  or  in  its  planets  their  reciprocal  forces  of  attraction 
Does  not  the  light  stream  through  the  immeasurable 
spaces  between  our  earth  and  the  nebula  which  is 
furthest  removed  from  us  ?  And  in  this  stream  of  light 
there  is  as  ample  an  existence  of  the  positive,  and  as 
much  a  home  for  the  abode  of  a  spiritual  world,  as 
there  is  a  dwelling-place  for  thy  own  spirit  in  the  sub- 
stance of  the  brain.  To  these  and  similar  reflections 
succeeded  the  following  dream  :  — 

Methought  my  body  sank  down  in  ruins,  and  my 
Inner  form  stepped  out  apparelled  In  light :  and  by  my 
side  there  stood  another  form  which  resembled  my 
own,  except  that  it  did  not  shine  like  mine,  but  light- 
ened unceasingly.  '  Two  thoughts,'  said  the  form, 
'  are  the  wings  with  which  I  move  ;  the  thought  of 
Here,  and  the  thought  of  There.  And  behold  !  I  am 
yonder  ; '  —  pointing  to  a  distant  world.  '  Come,  then, 
and  wait  on  me  with  thy  thoughts  and  with  thy  flight, 
that  I  may  show  to  thee  the  universe  under  a  veU.' 
And  I  flew  along  with  the  Form.  In  a  moment  our 
earth  fell  back,  behind  our  consuming  flight,  into  an 
abyss  of  distance ;  a  faint  gleam  only  was  reflected  from 
the  summits  of  the  Cordilleras  ;  and  a  few  momenta 
more  reduced  the  sun  to  a  little  star ;  and  soon  there 
remained  nothing  visible  of  our  system  except  a  comet 
which  was  travelling  from  our  sun  with  angelic  speed 
in  the  direction  of  Sirius.  Our  flight  now  carried  us 
go  rapidly  through  the  flocks  of  solar  bodies  —  flocks, 
past  counting  unless  to  tneir  heavenly  Shepherd,  — 
hat  scarcely  could  they  expand  themselves  before  us 
into  the  magnitude  of  moons,  before  they  sank  behind 
as  into  pale  nebular  gleams  ;  and  their  planetary  earths 
Ktuld  not  reveal  themselves  for  a  moment  to  the  tran- 


532  A.NALECTS    FROM    RICHTER. 

BCendenl  rapidity  of  our  course.  At  length  Sirius  and 
all  the  brotherhood  of  our  constellations  and  the  galaxy 
of  our  heavens  stood  far  below  our  feet  as  a  little 
nebula  amongst  other  yet  more  distant  nebulae.  Thus 
we  flew  on  through  the  starry  wildernesses :  one 
heaven  after  another  unfurled  its  immeasurable  banners 
before  us,  and  then  rolled  up  behind  us  :  galaxy  be- 
nind  galaxy  towered  up  into  solemn  altitudes  before 
which  the  spirit  shuddered  :  and  they  stood  in  long 
array  through  which  the  Infinite  Being  might  pass  in 
l>Togress.  Sometimes  the  Form  that  lightened  would 
outfly  my  weary  thoughts ;  and  then  it  would  be  seen 
far  off  before  me  like  a  coruscation  amongst  the  stars 
—  till  suddenly  I  thought  again  to  myself  the  thought 
of  There,  and  then  I  was  at  its  side.  But,  as  we  were 
thus  swallowed  up  by  one  abyss  of  stars  after  another, 
and  the  heavens  above  our  eyes  were  not  emptier  — 
neither  were  the  heavens  below  them  fuller ;  and  as 
Buns  without  intermission  fell  into  the  solar  ocean  like 
water-spouts  of  a  storm  which  fall  into  the  ocean  of 
waters  ;  —  then  at  length  the  human  heart  within  me 
was  overburthened  and  weary,  and  yearned  after  some 
narrow  cell  or  quiet  oratory  in  this  metropolitan  cathe- 
dral of  the  universe.  And  I  said  to  the  Form  at  my 
side  —  '  Oh  !  Spirit !  has  then  this  universe  no  end  ?  * 
And  the  Form  answered  and  said  — '  Lo  !  it  has  no 
Deginning.' 

Suddenly,  however,  the  heavens  above  us  appeared  td 
be  emptied,  and  not  a  star  was  seen  to  twinkle  in  the 
inighty  abyss  —  no  gleam  of  light  to  break  the  unity 
of  the  infinite  darkness.  The  starry  hosts  behind  us 
had  all  contracted  into  an  obscure  nebula  :  and  a» 
'ength  that  also  had  vanished.     And  I  thought  to  my 


ANAXECTS    FROM    KICHTER.  ftS3 

lelf, — '  At  last  the  universe  has  ended  :  '  and  1  trem- 
bled at  the  thought  of  the  illimitable  dungeon  of  pure 
—  pure  darkness  which  here  began  to  imprison  the 
creation :  I  shuddered  at  the  dead  sea  of  nothing,  in 
whose  unfathomable  zone  of  blackness  the  jewel  of  the 
glittering  universe  seemed  to  be  set  and  buried  forever ; 
and  through  the  night  in  which  we  moved  I  saw  the 
Form  which  still  lightened  as  before,  but  left  all  around 
it  unilluminated.  Then  the  Form  said  to  me  in  my 
anguish  —  '  Oh !  creature  of  little  faith  !  Look  up  ! 
the  most  ancient  light  is  coming  ! '  I  looked  ;  and  in 
a  moment  came  a  twilight,  —  in  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye  a  galaxy,  —  and  then  with  a  choral  burst  rushed  in 
all  the  company  of  stars.  For  centuries  gray  with  age, 
for  millennia  hoary  with  antiquity,  had  the  starry  light 
been  on  its  road  to  us  ;  and  at  length  out  of  heights 
Inaccessible  to  thought  it  had  reached  us.  Now  then, 
as  through  some  renovated  century,  we  flew  through 
new  cycles  of  heavens.  At  length  again  came  a  star- 
less interval ;  and  far  longer  it  endured,  before  the 
beams  of  a  starry  host  again  had  reached  us. 

As  we  thus  advanced  forever  through  an  interchange 
\.{  nights  and  solar  heavens,  and  as  the  interval  grew 
Btill  longer  and  longer  before  the  last  heaven  we  had 
»juitted  contracted  to  a  point,  —  and  as  once  we  issued 
uddenly  from  the  middle  of  thickest  night  into  an 
Aurora  Borealis  —  the  herald  of  an  expiring  world, 
tnd  we  found  throughout  tnis  cycle  of  solar  systems 
that  a  day  of  judgment  had  indeed  arrived  ;  the  suns 
lad  sickened,  and  the  planets  were  heaving  —  rocking, 
fawning  in  convulsions,  the  subterraneous  waters  of 
he  great  deeps  were  br'^aking  up,  and  lightnings  that 
n-ere  ten  diameters  of  a  world  in  length  ran  along  — 


53'4  ANALECTS     FROM     KICHTEB. 

itom.  east  to  west  —  from  Zenith  to  Nadir  ;  and  hert 
and  there,  where  a  sun  should  have  been,  we  saw 
instead  through  the  misty  vapor  a  gloomy  —  ashy  — 
leaden  corpse  of  a  solar  body,  that  sucked  in  flames 
from  the  perishing  ^rorld  —  but  gave  out  neither  light 
nor  heat ;  and  as  I  saw,  through  a  vista  which  had  no 
end,  m3untain  towering  above  mountain,  and  piled  up 
with  what  seemed  glittering  snow  from  the  conflict  of 
solar  and  planetary  bodies ;  —  then  my  spirit  bent 
under  the  load  of  the  universe,  and  I  said  to  the  Form, 
'  Rest,  rest :  and  lead  me  no  farther :  I  am  too  soli- 
tary in  the  creation  itself ;  and  in  its  deserts  yet  more 
so  :  the  full  world  is  great,  but  the  empty  world  is 
greater  ;  and  vnth.  the  universe  increase  its  Zaarahs.' 

Then  the  Form  touched  me  like  the  flowing  of  a 
oreath,  and  spoke  more  gently  than  before :  '  In  the 
presence  of  God  there  is  no  emptiness  :  above,  below, 
between,  and  round  about  the  stars,  in  the  darkness 
and  in  the  light,  dwelleth  the  true  and  very  Universe, 
the  sum  and  fountain  of  all  that  is.  But  thy  spirit  can 
bear  only  earthly  images  of  the  unearthly  ;  now  then  I 
cleanse  thy  sight  with  euphrasy ;  look  forth,  and  be- 
hold the  images.'  Immediately  my  eyes  were  opened ; 
and  I  looked,  and  I  saw  as  it  were  an  interminable 
sea  of  light  —  sea  immeasurable,  sea  unfathomable,  sea 
without  a  shore.  All  spaces  between  all  heavens  were 
.^lled  with  happiest  light :  and  there  was  a  thundenng 
of  floods  :  and  there  were  seas  above  the  seas,  anc. 
•eas  below  the  seas :  and  I  saw  all  the  tracklesf 
regions  that  we  had  voyaged  over  :  and  my  eye  com- 
orehended  the  farthest  and  the  nearest :  and  darknesa 
had  become  light,  and  the  light  darkness  :  for  th« 
ieserts  and  wastes  of  the  creation  were  now  filled  wit> 


A.NALECTS    FUOM    BICHXER.  535 

the  sea  of  light,  and  in  this  sea  the  suns  float(;d  lik»» 
ash-gray  hlossoms,  and  the  planets  like  hlack  grain 
of  seed.  Then  my  heart  comprehended  that  immoi 
tality  dwelled  in  the  spaces  between  the  worlds,  ant 
death  only  amongst  the  worlds.  Upon  all  the  sum 
there  walked  upright  shadows  in  the  form  of  men  :  but 
they  were  glorified  when  they  quitted  these  perish- 
able worlds,  and  when  they  sank  into  the  sea  of 
light :  and  the  murky  planets,  I  perceived,  were  but 
cradles  for  the  infant  spirits  of  the  universe  of  light. 
In  the  Zaarahs  of  the  creation  I  saw  —  I  heard  —  I 
felt  —  the  glittering  —  the  echoing  —  the  breathing 
of  life  and  creative  power.  The  suns  were  but  as 
gpinning- wheels,  the  planets  no  more  than  weavers' 
shuttles,  in  relation  to  the  infinite  web  which  com- 
poses the  veil  of  Isis  ;  ''*  which  veil  is  hung  over  the 
whole  creation,  and  lengthens  as  any  finite  being 
attempts  to  raise  it.  And  in  sight  of  this  immeasur- 
ability of  life,  no  sadness  could  endure  ;  but  only  joy 
that  knew  no  limit,  and  happy  prayers. 

But  in  the  midst  of  this  great  vision  of  the  Universe 
the  Form  that  lightened  eternally  had  become  invisible, 
or  had  vanished  to  its  home  in  the  unseen  world  of 
spirits  :  I  was  left  alone  in  the  centre  of  a  universe  of 
life,  and  J  yearned  after  some  sympathizing  being. 
Suddenly  from  the  starry  deeps  there  came  floating 
•^hrough  the  ocean  of  light  a  planetary  body  ;  and  upon 
it  there  stood  a  woman  whose  face  was  as  the  face  of  a 
Madonna  :  and  by  her  side  there  stood  a  child,  whose 
■•ountenance  varied  not  —  neither  was  it  magnified  aa 
oe  drew  nearer.  This  child  was  a  king,  for  I  saw  that 
lie  had  a  cro^vn  upor  his  head  :  but  the  crown  was  • 
•Town  of  thorns.      Then    also   I  perceived   that  the 


536  A.NALECTS    FROM    EICHTEE. 

planetary  body  was  our  unhappy  earth  :  and,  as  the 
earth  drew  near,  this  child  who  had  come  forth  from 
the  starry  deeps  to  comfort  me  threw  upon  me  a  look 
of  gentlest  pity  and  of  unutterable  love  —  so  that  in 
my  heart  I  had  a  sudden  rapture  of  joy  such  as  passes 
all  understanding ;  and  I  awoke  in  the  tumult  of  my 
happiness. 

I  awoke  :  but  my  happiness  survived  my  dream : 
and  I  exclaimed  —  Oh  !  how  beautiful  is  death,  seeing 
that  we  die  in  a  world  of  life  and  of  creation  without 
end  !  and  I  blessed  God  for  my  life  upon  earth,  but 
much  more  for  the  life  in  those  unseen  depths  of  the 
universe  which  are  emptied  of  all  but  the  Supreme 
Reality,  and  where  no  earthly  life  nor  perishable  hope 
can  enter. 

COlfPLAINT   OF   THE   BIRD    IN   A   DARKENED   CAGE. 

'  Ah  ! '  said  the  imprisoned  bird,  '  how  unhappy 
were  I  in  my  eternal  night,  but  for  those  melodious 
ones  which  sometimes  make  their  way  to  me  like 
beams  of  light  from  afar,  and  cheer  my  gloomy  day. 
But  I  will  myself  repeat  these  heavenly  melodies  like 
an  echo,  until  I  have  stamped  them  in  my  heart ;  and 
then  I  shall  be  able  to  bring  comfort  to  myself  in  my 
darkness  I '  Thus  spoke  the  little  warbler,  and  soon 
had  learned  the  sweet  airs  that  were  sung  to  it  with 
voice  and  instrument.  That  done,  the  curtain  was 
I  lised  ;  for  the  darkness  had  been  purposely  contrived 
to  assist  in  its  instruction.  Oh  !  man,  how  often  dost 
thou  complain  of  overshadowing  grief  and  of  darkness 
resting  upon  thy  days  !  And  yet  what  cause  for  com 
plaint,  unless  indeed  thou  hast  failed  to  learn  wisdom 
om  suffering  ?     For  is  not  the  whole  sum  cf  humas 


ANALECTS    FBOM    BICHTEB.  537 

life  a  veiling  and  an  obscuring  of  the  immortal  spirit 
of  man  ?  Then  first,  when  the  fleshly  curtain  falls 
away,  may  it  soar  upwards  into  a  region  of  happiei 
melodies ! 


UN  THB  DEATH  07  TOCNO  CHILDREN. 

Ephemera  die  all  at  sunset,  and  no  insect  of  this 
class  has  ever  sported  in  the  beams  of  the  morning 
lun.^"!  Happier  are  ye,  little  human  ephemera!  Ye 
played  only  in  the  ascending  beams,  and  in  the  early 
dawn,  and  in  the  eastern  light ;  ye  drank  only  of  the 
prelibations  of  life  ;  hovered  for  a  little  space  over  a 
world  of  freshness  and  of  blossoms  ;  and  fell  asleep  in 
innocence  before  yet  the  morning  dew  was  exhaled ! 

THE  PROPHETIC  DEW-DROPS 

A  delicate  child,  pale  and  prematurely  wise,  was 
4)mplaining  on  a  hot  morning  that  the  poor  dew-drops 
had  been  too  hastily  snatched  away  and  not  allowed 
to  glitter  on  the  flowers  like  other  happier  dew-drops  '^^ 
that  live  the  whole  night  through,  and  sparkle  in  the 
moonlight  and  through  the  morning  onwards  to  noon- 
day :  '  The  sun,'  said  the  child,  '  has  chased  them  away 
with  his  heat  —  or  swallowed  them  in  his  wrath.* 
Boon  after  came  rain  and  a  rainbow  ;  whereupon  his 
father  pointed  upwards  —  '  See,'  said  he,  '  there  stand 
thy  dew-drops  gloriously  re-set  —  a  glittering  jewellery 
■ —  in  the  heavens  ;  and  the  clownish  foot  tramples  on 
ihem  no  more.  By  this,  my  child,  thou  art  taught 
that  what  withers  upon  earth  blooms  again  in  heaven.' 
rhus  the  father  spoke,  and  knew  not  that  he  spoke 


538  ANALECTS    FROM    EICHTEK. 

prefiguring  words  :  for  soon  after  the  delicate  child, 
with  the  morning  brightness  of  his  early  wisdom,  wm 
exhaled,  like  a  dew-drop,  into  heaven. 

ON   DEATH. 

We  should  all  think  of  death  as  a  less  hideous 
object,  if  it  simply  untenanted  our  bodies  of  a  spirit, 
without  corrupting  them  ;  secondly,  if  the  grief  which 
we  experience  at  the  spectacle  of  our  friends'  gravei 
were  not  by  some  confusion  of  the  mind  blended  with 
the  image  of  our  own  :  thirdly,  if  we  had  not  in  this 
life  seated  ourselves  in  a  warm  domestic  nest,  which 
we  are  unwilling  to  quit  for  the  cold  blue  regions  of 
the  unfathomable  heavens  ;  finally,  —  if  death  were 
denied  to  us.  Once  in  dreams  I  saw  a  human  being 
of  heavenly  intellectual  faculties,  and  his  aspirations 
were  heavenly  ;  but  he  was  chained  (methought)  eter- 
nally to  the  earth.  The  immortal  old  man  had  five 
great  wounds  in  his  happiness  —  five  worms  that 
gnawed  forever  at  his  heart :  he  was  unhappy  in  spring- 
time, because  that  is  a  season  of  hope  —  and  rich  with 
phantoms  of  far  happier  days  than  any  which  this  acel- 
dama  of  earth  can  realize.  He  was  unhappy  at  the 
Bound  of  music,  which  dilates  the  heart  of  man  into  it« 
whole  capacity  for  the  infinite,  and  he  cried  aloud  — 
•  Away,  away  !  Thou  speakest  of  things  which  through- 
out my  endless  life  I  have  found  not,  and  shall  not 
find ! '  He  was  unhappy  at  the  remembrance  of 
farthly  affections  and  dissevered  hearts :  for  love  is  a 
plant  which  may  bud  in  this  life,  but  it  must  fiourisL 
n  Another.  He  was  unhappy  under  the  glorious  spec- 
tacle of  the  starry  host,  and  ejaculated  forever  in  hit 


ANALECTS    FfiOJl    UICHXE&.  539 

aeart  —  '  So  then  I  am  parted  from  you  to  all  eternity 
by  an  impassable  abyss  :  the  great  universe  of  suns  is 
above,  below,  and  round  about  me  :  but  I  am  chained 
to  a  little  ball  of  dust  and  ashes.'  He  was  unhappy 
before  the  great  ideas  of  Virtue  —  of  Truth  —  and  of 
God ;  because  he  knew  how  feeble  are  the  approxima- 
tions to  them  which  a  son  of  earth  can  make.  But 
this  was  a  dream:  God  be  thanked,  that  in  reality 
there  is  no  such  craving  and  asking  eye  directed  up- 
wards to  heaven  —  to  which  death  will  not  one  day 
bring  an  answer ! 

OtAOrNATION   UNTAKED   BY   THS   COASSES   REAUTIES   OF    UTS. 

Happy  is  every  actor  in  the  guilty  drama  of  life,  to 
whom  the  higher  illusion  within  supplies  or  conceals 
the  external  illusion ;  to  whom,  in  the  tumult  of  his 
part  and  its  intellectual  interest,  the  bungling  land« 
Bcapes  of  the  stage  have  the  bloom  and  reality  of 
nature,  and  whom  the  loud  parting  and  shocking  of 
the  scenes  disturb  not  in  his  dream ! 

SATIKICAI.  NOTICE  OF  REVEEWEHS. 

In  Swabia,  in  Saxony,  in  Pomerania,  are  towns  in 
which  are  stationed  a  strange  sort  of  officers  —  valuers 
>f  author's  flesh,  something  like  our  old  market-look- 
ers in  this  town.^"^  They  are  commonly  called  tasters 
(or  PrcBgustatores)  because  they  eat  a  mouthful  of 
tvery  book  beforehand,  and  tek  the  people  whether  its 
;.avor  be  good.  We  authors,  in  spite,  call  them  re- 
fiewers :  but  I  believe  an  action  of  defamation  would 
fie  against  us  for  such  bad  words.     The  tasters  write 


540  ANALECTS    FROM    RICHTEU. 

no  books  themselves  ;  consequently  they  have  the  more 
time  to  look  over  and  tax  those  of  other  people.  Or, 
if  they  do  sometimes  write  books,  they  are  bad  ones  : 
which  again  is  very  advantageous  to  them :  for  who 
can  understand  the  theory  of  badness  in  other  people's 
books  so  well  as  those  who  have  learned  it  by  practice 
in  their  own  r  They  are  reputed  the  guardians  of 
literature  and  the  literati  for  the  same  reason  that  St. 
Nepomuk  is  the  patron  saint  of  bridges  and  of  all  who 
pass  over  them  —  viz.  because  he  himself  once  lost  his 
life  from  a  bridge. 

FEMALK  T0NGUK8. 

Hippel,  the  author  of  the  book  '  Upon  Mamage,* 
says  — '  A  woman,  that  does  not  talk,  must  be  a  stupid 
woman.'  But  Hippel  is  an  author  whose  opinions  it 
is  more  safe  to  admire  than  to  adopt.  The  most  in- 
telligent women  are  often  silent  amongst  women ;  and 
again  the  most  stupid  and  the  most  silent  are  often 
aeither  one  nor  the  other  except  amongst  men.  In 
general  the  current  remark  upon  men  is  valid  also  with 
respect  to  women  —  that  those  for  the  most  part  are 
the  greatest  thinkers  who  are  the  least  talkers;  as 
frogs  cease  to  croak  when  light  is  brought  to  the  water 
edge.  However,  in  fact,  the  disproportionate  talking 
of  women  arises  out  of  the  sedentariness  of  their  labors : 
•edentary  artisans,  —  as  tailors,  shoemakers,  weavers, 
—  have  this  habit  as  well  as  hypochondriacal  tenden- 
ties  in  common  with  women.  Apes  do  not  talk,  aa 
#avages  say,  that  they  may  not  be  set  to  work :  bul 
women  often  talk  double  their  share  —  even  becmut 
*hey  work. 


A-NALECTS    FKOM    RlCHTER.  .')4I 


FORGIVENESS. 

Nothing  is  more  moving  to  man  than  the  spectacle 
of  reconciliation  :  our  weaknesses  are  thus  indemnified 
and  are  not  too  costly  —  being  the  price  we  pay  for 
the  hour  of  forgiveness  :  and  the  archangel,  who  has 
never  felt  anger,  has  reason  to  envy  the  man  who  sub- 
dues it.  When  thou  forgivest,  —  the  man,  who  has 
pierced  thy  heart,  stands  to  thee  in  the  relation  of  the 
sea-worm  that  perforates  the  shell  of  the  muscle,  which 
straightway  closes  the  wound  with  a  pearl. 


The  graves  of  the  best  of  men,  of  the  noblest  mar- 
tyrs, are  like  the  graves  of  the  Herrnhuters  (the  Mora- 
vian brethren)  —  level,  and  undistinguishable  from  the 
universal  earth :  and,  if  the  earth  could  give  up  her 
secrets,  our  whole  globe  would  appear  a  Westminster 
Abbey  laid  flat.  Ah  !  what  a  multitude  of  tears,  what 
myriads  of  bloody  drops  have  been  shed  in  secrecy 
about  the  three  corner-trees  of  earth  —  the  tree  of  life, 
the  tree  of  knowledge,  and  the  tree  of  freedom,  —  shed, 
but  never  reckoned  !  It  is  only  great  periods  of  calam- 
ity that  reveal  to  us  our  great  men,  as  comets  are  re- 
vealed by  total  eclipses  of  the  sun.  Not  merely  upon 
the  field  of  battle,  but  also  upon  the  consecrated  soil 
of  virtue  —  and  upon  the  classic  ground  of  truth,  thou- 
sands of  nameless  heroes  must  fall  and  struggle  to  build 
up  the  footstool  from  which  history  surveys  the  one 
hero,  whose  name  is  embalmed,  bleeding  —  conquer- 
!ing  —  and  resplendent.  The  grandest  of  heroic  deeds 
are  those  which  are  performed  within  four  walls  and 
'n   domestic  privacy.      And,  because  history  records 


542  ANALECTS    FKO.M    KICHTEB. 

only  tlie  self-sacrifices  of  the  male  sex,  and  because 
she  dips  her  pen  only  in  blood,  —  therefore  is  it  that 
in  the  eyes  of  the  unseen  spirit  of  the  world  our  annals 
appear  doubtless  far  more  beautiful  and  noble  than  in 
our  own. 


THS  OKANDEVK  OF   UAH   IN   HIS   LITTLENESS 

Man  upon  this  earth  would  be  vanity  and  hollow- 
ness,  dust  and  ashes,  vapor  and  a  bubble,  —  were  it 
not  that  he  felt  himself  to  be  so.  That  it  is  possible 
for  him  to  harbor  such  a  feeling,  —  this,  by  implying 
a  comparison  of  himself  with  something  higher  in  him- 
self, this  is  it  which  makes  him  the  immortal  creature 
that  he  is. 


The  earth  is  every  day  overspread  with  the  veil  of 
night  for  the  same  retison  as  the  cages  of  birds  arc 
darkened  —  viz.  that  we  may  the  more  readily  appre- 
hend the  higher  harmonies  of  thought  in  the  hush  and 
quiet  of  darkness.  Thoughts,  which  day  turns  into 
•moke  and  mist,  stand  about  us  in  the  night  as  lights 
and  flames  :  even  as  the  column  which  fluctuates  above 
the  crater  of  Vesuvius,  in  the  daytime  appears  a  pillai 
of  cloud,  but  by  night  a  pillar  of  fire. 

THE  STAK8. 

Look  up,  and  behold  the  eternal  fields  of  light  that 
i©  round  about  the  throne  of  God.  Had  no  star  evei 
ppeared  in  the  heavens,  to  man  there  would  hav« 


ANALECTS    FKOM    KICHTER.  543 

been  no  heavens ;  and  he  would  have  laid  himself 
down  to  his  last  sleep,  in  a  spirit  of  anguish,  as  upon  a 
gloomy  earth  vaulted  over  by  a  material  arch  —  solid 
and  impervious. 

HARTTRDOH. 

To  die  for  truth  —  is  not  to  die  for  one's  country, 
but  to  die  for  the  world.  Truth,  like  the  Venus  de% 
Medici,  will  pass  down  in  thirty  fragments  to  posteri- 
ty :  but  posterity  will  collect  and  recompose  them  into 
a  goddess.  Then  also  thy  temple,  oh  eternal  Truth  ! 
that  now  stands  half  below  the  earth  —  made  hollow 
by  the  sepulchres  of  its  witnesses,  will  raise  ir^elf  in 
the  total  majesty  of  its  proportions ;  and  will  stand  in 
monumental  granite ;  and  every  pillar  on  which  it 
rests,  will  be  fixed  in  the  grave  of  a  martyr. 

THB   QUARRELS   OF   FRIENDS. 

Why  is  it  that  the  most  fervent  love  becomes  more 
fervent  by  brief  interruption  and  reconciliation  ?  and 
why  must  a  storm  agitate  our  afi"ections  before  they  can 
raise  the  highest  rainbow  of  peace  ?  Ah !  for  this  rea  - 
son  it  is  —  because  all  passions  feel  their  object  to  be 
as  eternal  as  themselves,  and  no  love  can  admit  the 
feeling  that  the  beloved  object  should  die.  And  under 
this  feeling  of  imperishableness  it  is  that  we  hard  fields 
Df  ice  shock  together  so  harshly,  whilst  all  the  while 
ander  the  sunbeams  of  a  little  space  of  seventy  yean 
ne  are  rapidly  dissolving. 


544  ▲NAi.ECXS    FROM    lilCHTEB. 

DKEAMINQ. 

B;it  for  dreams,  that  lay  Mosaic  worlds  tesselated 
«irith  flowers  and  jewels  before  the  blind  sleeper,  and 
surround  the  recumbent  living  with  the  figures  of  the 
dead  in  the  upright  attitude  of  life,  the  time  would  be 
too  long  before  we  are  allowed  to  rejoin  our  brothers, 
parents,  friends :  every  year  we  should  become  more 
and  more  painfully  sensible  of  the  desolation  made 
around  us  by  death,  if  sleep  —  the  ante-chamber  of 
the  grave  —  were  not  hung  by  dreams  with  the  busts 
of  those  who  live  in  the  other  world. 

TWO   DIVISIONS   OF   PHILOSOPHIC   MINDS. 

There  are  two  very  different  classes  of  philosophical 
heads  —  which,  since  Kant  has  introduced  into  phi- 
losophy the  idea  of  positive  and  negative  quantities,  I 
shall  willingly  classify  by  means  of  that  distinction. 
The  positive  intellect  is,  like  the  poet,  in  conjunction 
with  the  outer  world,  the  father  of  an  inner  world  ; 
and,  like  the  poet  also,  holds  up  a  transforming  mirror 
in  which  the  entangled  and  distorted  members  as  they 
are  seen  in  our  actual  experience  enter  into  new  com- 
binations which  compose  a  fair  and  luminous  world : 
the  hypothesis  of  Idealism  (i.  e.  the  Fichtean  system) 
the  Monads  and  the  Pre-established  Harmony  of  Leib- 
nitz —  and  Spinozism  are  all  births  of  a  genial  mo- 
ment, and  not  the  wooden  carving  of  logical  toil.  Such 
men  therefore  as  Leibnitz,  Plato,  Herder,  &c.  I  call 
positive  intellects  ;  because  they  seek  and  yield  thi 
positive ;  and  because  their  inner  world,  having  raised 
tself  higher  out  of  the  water  than  in  others,  thereby 


ANALECTS    FROM    KICHTEK.  545 

•verlooks  a  larger  prospect  of  island  and  continents. 
A.  negative  head,  on  the  other  hand,  discovers  hy  its 
icuteness  —  not  any  positive  truths  but  the  negative 
{i.  e.  the  errors)  of  other  people.  Such  an  intellect, 
as  for  example  Bayle,  one  of  the  greatest  of  that  class, 

—  appraises  the  funds  of  others,  rather  than  brings 
any  fresh  funds  of  his  own.  In  lieu  of  the  obscure 
ideas  which  he  finds  he  gives  us  clear  ones  :  but  in 
this  there  is  no  positive  accession  to  our  knowledge  ; 
for  all  that  the  clear  idea  contains  in  development, 
exists  already  by  implication  in  the  obscure  idea. 
Negative  intellects  of  every  age  are  unanimous  in  their 
abhorrence  of  everything  positive.  Impulse,  feeling, 
instinct  —  everything  in  short  which  is  incomprehen- 
eible,  they  can  endure  just  once  —  that  is,  at  the  sum- 
mit of  their  chain  of  arguments  as  a  sort  of  hook  on 
which  they  may  hang  them,  —  but  never  afterwards. 

DIGNITY  OF  MAN   IN  SELF-SACRIFICE. 

That,  for  which  man  offers  up  his  blood  or  his 
property,  must  be  more  valuable  than  they.  A  good 
man  does  not  fight  with  half  the  courage  for  his  own 
life  that  he  shows  in  the  protection  of  another's.  The 
.Tiother,  who  will  hazard  nothing  for  herself,  will 
hazard  all  in  defence  of  her  child :  —  in  short,  only 
for  the  nobility  within  us  —  only  for  virtue,  will  man 
""pen  his  veins  and  offer  up  his  spirit :  but  this  nobUity 

—  this  virtue  —  presents  different  phases  :  with  the 
Christian  martyr  it  is  faith;  with  the  savage  it  ia 
aonor ;  \vith  the  republican  if  is  liberty. 

35 


546  ANA1.ECTS    FROM    RICHTBB. 


Fancy  can  lay  only  the  past  and  the  future  undei 
her  copjdng  paper :  and  every  actual  presence  of  the 
object  sets  limits  to  her  power:  just  as  water  distilled 
from  roses,  according  to  the  old  naturalists,  lost  it* 
power  exactly  at  the  periodical  blooming  of  the  rose. 

The  older  —  the  more  tranquil  —  and  pious  a  man 
Is,  80  much  the  more  holy  does  he  esteem  all  that  is 
innate,  that  is,  feeling  and  power ;  whereas  in  the 
estimate  of  the  multitude  whatsoever  is  self-acquired, 
the  ability  of  practice  and  science  in  general  has  an 
undue  pre-eminence  ;  for  the  latter  is  universally  ap- 
preciated and  therefore  even  by  those  who  have  it  not, 
but  the  former  not  at  all.  In  the  twilight  and  the 
moonshine  the  fixed  stars,  which  are  suns,  retire  and 
veU  themselves  in  obscurity ;  whilst  the  planets,  which 
are  simply  earths,  preserve  their  borrowed  light  unob- 
scured.  The  elder  races  of  men,  amongst  whom  man 
1005  more  though  he  had  not  yet  become  so  much,  had 
a  childlike  feeling  of  sympathy  with  all  the  gifts  of  the 
Infinite  — for  example,  with  strength  —  beauty  —  and 
good  fortune ;  and  even  the  involuntary  had  a  sanctity 
in  their  eyes,  and  was  to  them  a  prophecy  and  a  reve- 
lation :  hence  the  value  they  ascribed,  and  the  art  of 
interpretation  they  applied,  to  the  speeches  of  children 
—  of  madmen  —  of  drunkards  —  and  of  dreamers. 

As  the  blind  man  knows  not  light,  and  through  tha; 
^orance  also  of  necessity  knows  not  darkness,  —  bo 
r.kewise,  but  for  disinterestedness  we  should  kno^v 
nothing    of   selfishness,    but   for   slavery   nothing   of 


ANALECTS    FKOM    RICUTEK.  547 

freedom  :  there  are  perhaps  in  this  world  many  things 
which  remain  obscure  to  us  for  want  of  alternating 
with  their  opposites. 

Derham  remarks  in  his  Physico-theology  that  the 
deaf  hear  best  in  the  midst  of  noise,  as,  for  instance, 
during  the  ringing  of  bells,  &c.  This  must  be  the 
reason,  I  suppose,  that  the  thundering  of  drums,  can- 
nons, &c.  accompany  the  entrance  into  cities  of  princes 
and  ministers,  who  are  generally  rather  deaf,  in  ordet 
that  they  may  the  better  hear  the  petitions  and  nom- 
plaints  of  the  people. 


ANECDOTAGE/ 

This  orange  we  mean  to  squeeze  for  the  public  usei 
Where  an  author  is  poor,  this  is  wrong ;  but  Mist 
Hawkins  being  upon  her  own  acknowledgment  rich  (p. 
125),  keeping  "  a  carriage,  to  the  proprete  of  which,  she 
is  not  indifferent "  (p.  253),  and  being  able  to  give 
away  manors  worth  more  than  £1000  per  annum  (p. 
140),  it  is  most  clear  that  her  interests  ought  to  bend 
to  those  of  the  public ;  the  public  being  really  in  very 
low  circumstances,  and  quite  unable  to  buy  books  of 
luxury  and  anecdotage. 

"Who  is  the  author,  and  what  is  the  book  ?  The  au- 
thor has  descended  to  us  from  the  last  century,  and  has 
heard  of  little  that  has  happened  since  the  American 
war.  She  is  the  daughter  of  Sir  John  Hawkins,  known 
to  the  world,  1st,  as  the  historian  of  music ;  2d,  as  the 
acquaintance  and  biographer  of  Dr.  Johnson ;  3d,  as 
the  object  of  some  vulgar  gossip  and  calumnies  made 
current  by  Mr.  Boswell.  Her  era  being  deteniiined, 
the  reader  can  be  at  no  loss  to  deduce  the  re&t :  her 
chronology  known,  all  is  known.  She  belongs  to  the 
literati  of  those  early  ages  who  saw  Dr.  Johnson  in  the 
body,  and  conversed  in  the  flesh  with  Goldsmith,  Gar- 
rick,  Bennet  Langton,  Wilkes  and  liberty,  Sir  Joshua, 


1  Aiuedotet,  Biographical  Sketches,  and  Mtmoirt.    Collected  \tj 
LetitU  Matilda  Hawluiuu 


ANECDOTAOE. 


549 


Hawkesworth,  &c.,  &c.  All  of  these  good  people  she 
** found**  (to  use  her  own  lively  expression)  at  her 
father's  house  :  that  is,  upon  her  earliest  introduction 
to  her  father's  drawing-room  at  Twickenham,  most  ol 
them  were  already  in  possession.  Amongst  the  "  (fee, 
&c."  as  we  have  classed  them,  were  some  who  really 
ought  not  to  have  been  thus  slurred  over,  such  as 
Bishop  Percy,  Tyrwhitt,  Dean  Tucker,  and  Hurd :  but 
others  absolutely  pose  us.  For  instance,  does  the 
reader  know  anything  of  one  Israel  Mauduit  ?  We 
profess  to  know  nothing ;  no,  nor  at  all  the  more  for 
his  having  been  the  author  of  "  Considerations  on  the 
German  War,"  (p.  7):  in  fact,  there  have  been  so 
many  German  wars  since  Mr.  Mauduit's  epoch,  and 
the  public  have  since  then  been  called  on  to  "  consider  ** 
BO  many  "considerations,"  that  Miss  Hawkins  must 
pardon  us  for  declaring,  that  the  illustrious  Mauduit 
(though  we  remember  his  name  in  Lord  Orford's  Me- 
moires)  is  now  defunct,  and  that  his  works  have  fol- 
lowed him.  Not  less  defunct  than  Mauduit  is  the  not 
less  illustrious  Brettell.  Brettell !  What  Brettell  ? 
What  Brettell !  Why,  "  Wonderful  old  Colonel  Brettell 
of  the  Middlesex  Militia  (p.  10,)  who  on  my  requesting 
him,  at  eighty-five  years  of  age,  to  be  careful  in  getting 
over  a  five-barred  gate,  replied,  '  Take  care  of  what  ? 
Time  was,  when  I  could  have  jumped  over  it."* 
"  Time  was  ! "  he  says,  t^a«  /  but  how  will  that  satisfy 
posterity  ?  What  proof  has  the  nineteenth  century  that 
he  did  it,  or  could  have  done  it  ?  So  much  for  Brettell 
and  Mauduit.  But  last  comes  one  who  "  hight  Cos- 
tard: "and  here  we  are  posed  indeed.  Can  this  be 
Bhakspeare's    Costard  —  everybody's    Costard  —  the 


550 


ANKCDOTAOE. 


Costard  of  "  Love's  Labor's  Lost  ?  "  But  how  is  that 
possible  ?  says  a  grave  and  learned  friend  at  our  elbow. 
I  will  affirm  it  to  be  impossible.  How  can  any  man 
celebrated  by  Shakspeare  have  visited  at  Twickenham 
with  Dr.  Johnson  ?  That  indeed,  we  answer,  deserves 
consideration  :  yet,  if  he  can,  where  would  Costard  be 
more  naturally  found  than  at  Sir  John  Hawkins's  house, 
who  had  himself  annotated  on  Shakspeare,  and  lived  in 
company  with  so  many  other  annotators,  as  Percy, 
Tyrwhitt,  Steevens,  &c.  ?  Yet  again,  at  p.  10,  and  at 
p.  24,  he  is  called  "  the  learned  Costard."  Now  this  it 
an  objection  ;  for  Shakspeare's  Costard,  the  old  Original 
Costard,  is  far  from  learned.  But  what  of  that  f  He 
had  plenty  of  time  to  mend  his  manners,  and  fit  himself 
for  the  company  of  Dr.  Johnson  :  and  at  p.  80,  where 
Miss  Hawkins  again  affirms  that  his  name  was  "  always 
preceded  by  the  epithet  learned,"  she  candidly  admits 
that  "  he  was  a  feeble,  ailing,  emaciated  man,  who  had 
all  the  appearance  of  having  sacrificed  his  health  to  his 
studies,"  as  well  he  might,  if  he  had  studied  from  Shak- 
speare's time  to  Dr.  Johnson's.  With  all  his  learning, 
however.  Costard  could  make  nothing  of  a  case  which 
occurred  in  Sir  John  Hawkins's  grounds  ;  and  we  con- 
fess that  we  can  make  no  more  of  it  than  Costard.  "  In 
a  paddock,"  says  Miss  Hawkins,  "  we  had  an  oblong 
piece  of  water  supplied  by  a  sluice.  Keeping  poultry, 
this  was  very  convenient  for  ducks :  on  a  sudden,  a 
prodigious  consternation  was  perceived  among  the 
ducks:  they  were  with  great  difficulty  persuaded  to 
take  to  the  water ;  and,  when  there,  shuddered,  grew 
wet,  and  were  drowned.  They  were  supposed  dis- 
eased; others   were  bought  at  other  places;  but  ii 


ANECDOTAGB.  55] 

rain!  none  of  our  ducks  could  swim.  I  remember  the 
circumstance  calling  out  much  thought  and  conjecture. 
The  learned  George  Costard,  Dr.  Morton,  and  the  med- 
ical advisers  ^'^  of  the  neighborhood,  were  consulted  : 
every  one  had  a  different  supposition  ;  and  I  well  recol- 
iect  my  own  dissatisfaction  with  all  I  heard.  It  was 
told  of  course  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Garrick.  Mrs.  Garrick 
would  not  give  credit  to  it :  Garrick  himself  was  not 
incredulous  ;  and  after  a  discussion,  he  turned  to  my 
father  with  his  jocose  impetuosity,  and  said, '  There  's 
my  wife,  who  will  not  believe  the  story  of  these  ducks^ 
and  yet  she  believes  in  the  eleven  thousand  virgins.' " 
Most  probably  the  ducks  were  descended  from  that 
*'  which  Samuel  Johnson  trod  on,"  which,  "  if  it  had  lived 
and  had  not  died,  had  surely  been  an  odd  one : "  its 
posterity  therefore  would  be  odd  ones.  However,  Cos- 
tard could  make  nothing  of  it :  and  to  this  hour  the 
case  is  an  unsolved  problem,  like  the  longitude  of  the 
northwest  passage.  Perhaps  a  water-snake  lay  bask- 
ing in  the  pond. 

Of  Lord  Orford,  who,  like  Costard,  was  a  neighbor 
and  an  acquaintance  of  her  father's,  Miss  Hawkins  gives 
us  a  very  long  account ;  no  less  than  thirty  pages  (pp. 
87-117)  being  dedicated  to  him  on  his  first  introduc- 
tion. Amongst  his  eccentricities,  she  mentions  that 
'*  he  made  no  scruple  of  avowing  his  thorough  want  of 
taste  for  Don  Quixote."  This  was  already  known 
from  the  Walpoliana ;  where  it  may  be  seen  that  his 
objection  was  singularly  disingenuous,  because  built  on 
an  incident  (the  windmill  adventure),  which,  if  it  were 
»s  extravagant  as  it  seems  (though  it  has  been  palliated 
by  the  peculiar  appearance  of  Spanish  mills),  is  yet  of 


552 


ANKCDOTAGK. 


00  weight,  because  not  characteristic  of  the  work :  it 
contradicts  its  general  character.  We  shall  extract  hei 
account  of  Lord  Orford's  person  and  abord,  his  dress 
and  his  address,  which  is  remarkably  lively  and  pictur- 
esque, as  might  have  been  expected  from  the  pen  of  a 
female  observer,  who  was  at  that  time  young. 

"  His  figure  was,  as  every  one  knows,  not  merely 
tall,  but  more  properly  long,  and  slender  to  excess ;  hia 
complexion,  and  particularly  his  hands,  of  a  most  un- 
healthy paleness.  I  speak  of  him  before  the  year 
1772.  His  eyes  were  remarkably  bright  and  penetrat- 
ing, very  dark  and  lively:  his  voice  was  not  strong; 
but  his  tones  were  extremely  pleasant,  and  (if  I  may 
80  say)  highly  gentlemanly.  I  do  not  remember  his 
common  gait :  he  always  entered  a  room  in  that  style 
of  affected  delicacy  which  fashion  had  then  made  almost 
natural ;  chapeau  bras  between  his  hands,  as  if  he 
wished  to  compress  it,  or  under  his  arm ;  knees  bent ; 
and  feet  on  tip-toe,  as  if  afraid  of  a  wet  floor.  His 
dress  in  visiting  was  most  usually  (in  summer  when  I 
most  saw  him)  a  lavender  suit ;  the  waistcoat  em- 
broidered with  a  little  silver,  or  of  white  silk  worked  in 
the  tambour ;  partridge  silk  stockings ;  and  gold  buckles ; 
ruflles  and  frill  generally  lace.  I  remember,  when  a 
child,  thinking  him  very  much  under-dressed,  if  at  any 
time,  except  in  mourning,  he  wore  hemmed  cambric. 
In  summer,  no  powder ;  but  his  wig  combed  straight, 
and  showing  his  very  smooth  pale  forehead,  and  queued 
behind;  in  winter,  powder."  "What  an  amusing  old 
coxcomb !  ^"* 

Of  Dr.  Johnson,  we  have  but  one  anecdote ;  but  it 
u  very  good;  and  good  in  the  best  way — because  char 


ANECOOTAOE. 


55S 


■Cteristic ;  being,  in  fact,  somewhat  brutal,  and  very 
witty.  Miss  Knight,  the  author  of  "  Dinarbas,"  and  of 
"  Marcus  Flaminius,"  called  to  pay  him  a  farewell  visit 
on  quitting  England  for  the  Continent:  this  lady  (then 
a  young  lady)  is  remarkably  large  in  person  ;  so  the 
old  savage  dismissed  her  with  the  following  memorial 
of  his  good-nature :  "  Go,  go  my  dear ;  for  you  are 
too  big  for  an  island."  As  may  be  supposed,  the  Doctor 
is  no  favorite  with  Miss  Hawkins:  but  she  is  really  too 
hard  upon  our  old  friend ;  for  she  declares  "  that  she 
never  heard  him  say  in  any  visit  six  words  that  could 
compensate  for  the  trouble  of  getting  to  his  den,  and 
the  disgust  of  seeing  such  squalidness  as  she  saw  no- 
where else."  One  thing  at  least  Miss  Hawkins  might 
have  learned  from  Dr.  Johnson  ;  and  let  her  not  sup- 
pose that  we  say  it  in  ill-nature :  she  might  have 
learned  to  weed  her  pages  of  many  barbarisms  in  lan- 
guage which  now  disfigure  tnem;  for  instance,  the  bar- 
barism of  "  compensate  ybr  the  trouble  "  — in  the  very 
sentence  before  us  —  instead  of  "  compensate  the 
trouble." 

Dr.  Farmer  disappointed  Miss  Hawkins  by  "  the 
homeliness  of  his  external."  But  surely  when  a  man 
comes  to  that  supper  at  which  he  does  not  eat  but  is 
eaten,  we  have  a  deeper  interest  in  his  wit,  which  may 
chance  to  survive  him,  than  in  his  beauty,  which  pos- 
terity cannot  possibly  enjoy  any  more  than  the  petitt 
toupers  which  it  adorned.  Had  the  Doctor  been  a  very 
Adonis,  he  could  not  have  done  Miss  Hawkins  so  much 
service  as  by  two  of  his  propos  which  she  records :  One 
was,  that  on  a  report  being  mentioned,  at  her  father's 
table,  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  having  shared  the  gains 


io^  ANECDOTAOK. 

ari«it:g  from  the  <ixhibitioD  of  his  pictures,  with  hit 

man-servant,  who  was   fortunately  called   Ralph,  Dr, 

Fpirner  quoted  ag'nnst  Sir  Joshua  these  two  lines  from 

Hudibras :  — 

"A  squire  he  had  whose  name  was  Ralph, 
Who  in  the  adventure  went  his  half." 

Yhe  other  was,  that  speaking  of  Dr.  Parr,  he  said  that 
'  he  seemed  to  have  been  at  a  feast  of  learning  (for 
'  aming,  read  languages)  from  which  he  had  carried  off 
\  the  scraps."  Miss  Hawkins  does  not  seem  to  be 
ware  that  this  is  taken  from  Shakspeare :  but,  what 
1  still  more  surprising,  she  declares  herself  "  absolutely 
gnorant  whether  it  be  praise  or  censure."  All  we  shall 
^y  on  that  question  is,  that  we  most  seriously  advise 
aer  not  to  ask  Dr.  Parr. 

Of  Paul  Whitehead,  we  are  told  that  his  wife  "  was 
60  nearly  idiotic,  that  she  would  call  his  attention  in 
conversation  to  look  at  a  cow,  not  as  one  of  singular 
beauty,  but  in  the  words  — '  Mr.  Whitehead,  there 's  a 
cow.' "  On  this  Miss  Hawkins  moralizes  in  a  very  ec- 
centric way  :  "  He  took  it,"  says  she,  "  most  patiently, 
as  he  did  all  such  trials  of  his  temper."  Trials  of  his 
temper !  why,  was  he  jealous  of  the  cow  ?  Had  he  any 
personal  animosity  to  the  cow  ?  Not  only,  however, 
was  Paul  very  patient  (at  least  under  his  bovine  afflic- 
tions, and  his  "trials"  in  regard  to  horned  cattle),  but 
also  Paul  was  very  devout ;  of  which  he  gave  this 
pleasant  assurance  :  "  When  I  go,"  said  he,  "  into  St. 
Paul's,  I  admire  it  as  a  very  fine,  grand,  beautiful  build- 
ing ;  and,  when  I  have  contemplated  its  beauty,  I  come 
»ut :  but,  if  I  go  into  Westminster  Abbey,  d — n  me, 
I  'm  all  devotion."     So,  by  his  own  account,  Paul  ap» 


ANECDOTAOE. 


555 


pears  to  have  been  a  pretty  fellow  :  d — d  patient,  and 
d — d  devout. 

For  practical  purposes,  we  recommend  to  all  phy- 
Bicians  the  following  anecdote,  which  Sir  Richard  Jebb 
used  to  tell  of  himself:  as  Miss  Hawkins  observes,  it 
makes  even  rapacity  comical,  and  it  suggests  a  very 
useful  and  practical  hint.  "  He  was  attending  a  noble- 
man, from  whom  he  had  a  right  to  expect  a  fee  of  five 
guineas ;  he  received  only  three.  Suspecting  some 
trick  on  the  part  of  the  steward,  from  whom  he  received 
it,  he  at  the  next  visit  contrived  to  drop  the  three  gui- 
neas. They  were  picked  up,  and  again  deposited  in 
his  hand  :  but  he  still  continued  to  look  on  the  carpet. 
His  lordship  asked  if  all  the  guineas  were  found. 
'  There  must  be  two  guineas  still  on  the  carpet,'  re- 
plied Sir  Richard,  '  for  I  have  but  three.'  The  hint 
was  taken  as  he  meant." 

But  of  all  medical  stratagems,  commend  us  to  that 
practiced  by  Dr.  Munckley,  who  had  lived  with  Sir  J. 
Hawkins  during  his  bachelor  days  in  quality  of 
"  chum : "  and  a  chum  he  was,  in  Miss  Hawkins'  words, 
**  not  at  all  calculated  to  render  the  chum  state  happy." 
This  Dr.  Munckley,  by  the  bye,  was  so  huge  a  man- 
mountain,  that  Miss  Hawkins  supposes  the  blank  in 
the  well-known  epigram, 

*'  When walks  the  streets,  the  paviors  cry, 

'  God  bless  you,  Sir  I  '  and  lay  their  rammers  by," 

to  have  been  originally  filled  up  with  his  name,  —  but 
in  this  she  is  mistaken.  The  epigram  was  written  be- 
nore  he  was  born;  and  for  about  140  years  has  this 
empty  epigram,  like  other  epigrams  lo  be  let,  been  occu- 
pied by  a  succession  of  big  men :  we  believe  that  th» 


556 


AKECDOTAGE. 


original  tenant  was  Dr.  Ralph  Bathurst.  Muiickley 
however,  might  have  been  the  original  tenant,  if  it  had 
pleased  God  to  let  him  be  born  eighty  years  sooner ; 
for  he  was  quite  as  well  qualified  as  Bathurst  to  draw 
down  the  blessings  of  paviors,  and  to  play  the  part  o^ 
a  "  three-man  beetle."  "®  Of  this  Miss  Hawkins  gives  a 
proof  which  is  droll  enough :  "  accidentally  encounter- 
ing suddenly  a  stout  man-servant  in  a  narrow  passage, 
they  literally  stuck."  Each,  like  Horatius  Codes,  in 
the  words  of  Seneca,  solus  implevit  pontit  angustias. 
One  of  them,  it  is  clear,  must  have  backed ;  unless,  in- 
deed, they  are  sticking  there  yet.  It  would  be  curious 
to  ascertain  which  of  them  backed.  For  the  dignity  of 
science,  one  would  hope  it  was  not  Munckley.  Yet 
we  fear  he  was  capable  of  any  meanness,  if  Miss  Hawk- 
ins reports  accurately  his  stratagems  upon  her  father's 
purse  :  a  direct  attack  failing,  he  attacked  it  indirectly. 
But  Miss  Hawkins  shall  tell  her  own  tale.  "  He  was 
extremely  rapacious,  and  a  very  bad  economist ;  and, 
Boon  after  my  father's  marriage,  having  been  foiled  in 
his  attempt  to  borrow  money  of  him,  he  endeavored  to 
atone  to  himself  for  this  disappointment  by  protracting 
the  duration  of  a  low  fever  in  which  he  attended  him  ; 
making  unnecessary  visits,  and  with  his  hand  ever  open 
for  a  fee."  Was  there  ever  such  a  fellow  on  this  ter- 
raqueous globe  ?  Sir  John's  purse  not  yielding  to  a 
storm,  he  approaches  by  mining  and  sapping,  under 
cover  of  a  low  fever.  Did  this  Munckley  really  exist ; 
or  is  he  but  the  coinage  of  Miss  Hawkins's  brain  ?  U 
Che  reader  wishes  to  know  what  became  of  this  "great" 
man,  we  will  gratify  him.  He  was  "  foiled,"  as  we  have 
■een,  *'  in  liis  attempt  to  borrow  money  "  of  Sir  J.  H. 


ANECDOTAOE. 


557 


lie  was  also  soon  after  "  foiled  "  in  his  attempt  to  liva 
Munckley,  big  Munckley,  being  "  too  big  for  an  island" 
we  suppose,  was  compelled  to  die ;  he  gave  up  the 
ghost :  and  what  seems  very  absurd  both  to  us  and  to 
Miss  Hawkins,  he  continued  talking  to  the  last,  and 
went  off  in  the  very  act  of  uttering  a  most  prosaic 
truism,  which  yet  happened  to  be  false  in  his  case :  for 
his  final  words  were,  that  it  was  "  hard  to  be  taken  oflf 
'ust  then,  when  he  was  beginning  to  get  into  practice." 
Not  at  all,  with  such  practices  as  his :  where  men  enter 
into  partnerships  with  low  fevers,  it  is  very  fit  that  they 
should  "  back  "  out  of  this  world  as  fast  as  possible  ;  as 
fast  as,  in  all  probability,  he  had  backed  down  the  nar- 
row passage  before  the  stout  man-servant.  So  much 
for  Munckley  —  big  Munckley. 

It  does  not  strike  us  as  any  "  singular  feature  *'  (p. 
273),  in  the  history  of  Bartleman,  the  great  singer, 
"  that  he  lived  to  occupy  the  identical  house  in  Berners 
Street  in  which  his  first  patron  resided."  Knowing  the 
house,  its  pros  and  cons,  its  landlord,  &c.,  surely  it  was 
very  natural  that  he  should  avail  himself  of  his  knowl- 
edge for  his  own  convenience.  But  it  is  a  very  singular 
fact  (p.  160),  that  our  Government  should,  "merely  for 
want  of  caution,  have  sent  the  Culloden  ship  of  war  to 
convey  Cardinal  York  from  Naples."  This  we  suppose 
Miss  Hawkins  looks  upon  as  ominous  of  some  disaster ; 
for  she  considers  it  ^'■fortunate "  that  his  Eminence 
"  had  sailed  before  it  arrived."  Of  this  same  Cardinal 
York,  Miss  Hawkins  tells  us  further,  that  a  friend  of 
aers  having  been  invited  to  dine  with  him,  as  all  Eng- 
lishmen were  while  he  kept  a  table,  "  found  him,  as  all 
others  did,  a  good-natured,  almost  superannuated  gen* 


558  ANECDOTAGE. 

Ueman,  who  had  his  round  of  civilities  and  jokes.  He 
introduced  some  roast  beef,  by  saying  that  it  might  not 
be  as  good  as  that  in  England ;  for,  said  he,  you  know 
we  are  but  pretenders."  Yes,  the  Cardinal  was  a  pre- 
tender, but  his  beef  was  "  legitimate  ; "  unless,  indeed, 
his  bulls  pretended  to  be  oxen. 

On  the  subject  of  the  Pretender,  by  the  way,  we 
have  (at  p.  63)  as  fine  a  bon-mot  as  the  celebrated  toast 
of  Dr.  Byrom,  the  Manchester  Jacobite.  "The  Mar- 
chioness (the  Marchioness  of  Tweeddale)  had  been 
Lady  Frances  Carteret,  a  daughter  of  the  Earl  of 
Granville,  and  had  been  brought  up  by  her  Jacobite 
aunt,  Lady  Worsley,  one  of  the  most  zealous  of  that 
party.  The  Marchioness  herself  told  my  father,  that 
on  her  aunt's  upbraiding  her  when  a  child  with  not  at- 
tending prayers,  she  answered  that  she  heard  her  lady- 
ship did  not  pray  for  the  king.  '  Not  pray  for  the 
king  ? '  said  Lady  Worsley  ;  '  who  says  this  ?  I  wUl 
have  you  and  those  who  sent  you  know  that  I  do  pray 
for  the  king ;  but  I  do  not  think  it  necessary  to  tell 
God  Almighty  who  is  king.' " 

This  is  naivete,  which  becomes  wit  to  the  bystander, 
though  simply  the  natural  expression  of  the  thought  to 
him  who  utters  it.  Another  instance,  no  less  lively,  is 
the  following,  mentioned  at  Strawberry  Hill,  by  "  the 
Bister  of  one  of  our  first  statesmen,  now  deceased." 
"  She  had  heard  a  boy,  humored  to  excess,  tease  his 
mother  for  the  remains  of  a  favorite  dish ;  mamma  at 
length  replied,  *  Then  do  take  it,  and  have  done  teasing 
«e.*  He  then  flew  into  a  passion,  roaring  out,  '  What 
iid  you  give  it  me  for  ?     I  wanted  to  have  snatched 


ANECDOTAGE  559 

Ths  next  passage  we  shall  cite  relate,  j  a  rery  em- 
inent character  indeed,  truly  respectable,  and  entirely 
English,  viz.,  Plum-pudding.  The  obstinate  and  in- 
veterate  ignorance  of  Frenchmen  on  this  subject  is  well 
known.  Their  errors  are  grievous,  pitiable,  and  matter 
of  scorn  and  detestation  to  every  enlightened  mind.  In 
civilization,  in  trial  by  jury,  and  many  other  features  of 
social  happiness,  it  has  been  affirmed  that  the  French 
are  two  centuries  behind  us.  We  believe  it.  But  with 
regard  to  plum-pudding,  they  are  at  least  five  centuries 
in  arrear.  In  the  *'  Omniana,"  we  think  it  is,  Mr.  Southey 
has  recorded  one  of  their  insane  attempts  at  construct- 
ing such  a  pudding:  the  monstrous  abortion,  which  on 
that  occasion  issued  to  tlte  light,  the  reader  may  im- 
agine ;  and  will  be  at  no  loss  to  understand  that  volley 
of  " Diables"  "  Sacres,"  and  " Morbleus"  which  it  called 
forth,  when  we  mention  that  these  deluded  Frenchmen 
made  cheese  the  basis  of  their  infernal  preparation. 
Now  under  these  circumstances  of  national  infatuation, 
how  admirable  must  have  been  the  art  of  an  English 
party,  who,  in  the  very  city  of  Paris  (that  centre  of 
darkness  on  this  interesting  subject),  and  in  the  very 
teeth  of  Frenchmen,  did  absolutely  extort  from  French 
hands  a  real  English  plum-pudding :  yes !  compelled  a 
French  apothecary,  unknowing  what  he  did,  to  produce 
an  excellent  plum-pudding,  and  had  the  luxury  of  a 
hoax  into  the  bargain.  Verily,  the  ruse  was  magnif- 
ique ;  and  though  it  was  nearly  terminating  in  blood- 
shed, yet,  doubtless,  so  superb  a  story  would  have  been 
cheaply  purchased  by  one  or  two  lives.  Here  it  follows 
in  Miss  Hawkins's  own  words :  "  Dr.  Schomberg  of 
Reading,  in  the  early  part  of  his  life,  spent  a  Chrntmaa 


560 


ANEC  DOTAGE. 


at  Paris  with  some  English  friends.  They  were  de« 
«irou8  to  celebrate  the  season  in  the  manner  of  their 
own  country,  by  having,  as  one  dish  at  their  table,  an 
English  plum-pudding ;  but  no  cook  was  found  equal 
lo  the  task  of  compounding  it.  A  clergyman  of  the 
party  had  indeed  an  old  receipt-book  ;  but  this  did  not 
suflSciently  explain  the  process.  Dr.  Schomberg,  how- 
ever, supplied  all  that  was  wanting,  by  throwing  the 
recipe  into  the  form  of  a  piescription,  and  sending  it  to 
an  apothecary  to  be  made  up.  To  prevent  all  possi- 
bility of  error,  he  directed  that  it  should  be  boiled  in  a 
cloth,  and  sent  in  the  same  cloth,  to  be  applied  at  an 
hour  specified.  At  this  hour  it  arrived  borne  by  the 
apothecary's  assistant,  and  preceded  "  (sweet  heavens  !) 
"  by  the  apothecary  himself,  drest  according  to  the  pro- 
fessional formality  of  the  time,  with  a  sword.  Seeing, 
when  he  entered  the  apartment,  instead  of  signs  of  sick- 
ness, a  table  well  filled,  and  surrounded  by  very  merry 
faces,  he  perceived  that  he  was  made  a  party  in  a  joke 
that  turned  on  himself,  and  indignantly  laid  his  hand 
on  his  sword ;  but  an  invitation  to  taste  his  own  cookery 
appeased  him;  and  all  was  well." 

This  story  we  pronounce  altogether  unique :  for,  as 
on  the  one  hand,  the  art  was  divine  by  which  the  bene- 
fits of  medical  punctuality  and  accuracy  were  pressed 
into  the  service  of  a  Christmas  dinner  ;  so,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  strictly  and  satirically  probable,  when  told  of 
a  French  apothecary :  for  who  but  a  Frenchman, 
irhose  pharmacopoeia  still  teems  with  the  monstrous 
compounds  of  our  ancestors,  could  have  believed  tha 
such  a  preparation  was  seriously  designed  for  a  cat» 
plasm. 


ANECDOTAGE  561 

fn  our  next  extracts  we  com'  rpon  ground  rather 
render  and  unsafe  for  obstinate  .keptics.  We  have 
often  heard  of  learned  doctors,  from  Shrewsbury,  sup- 
pose, going  by  way  of  Birmingluim  to  Oxford  ;  and  at 
Birmingham,  under  the  unfortunate  ambiguity  of  "  the 
Oxford  coach,"  getting  into  that  from  Oxford,  which, 
by  nightfall,  safely  restored  the  astonished  doctor  to 
astonished  Shrewsbury.  Such  a  case  is  sad  and  pitiful ; 
but  what  is  that  to  the  case  (p.  164)  of  Wilkes  the 
painter,  who,  being  "  anxious  to  get  a  likeness  ''  of 
"  good  Dr.  Foster  "  (the  same  whom  Pope  has  honored 
with  the  couplet,  — 

"Let  modest  Foster,  if  he  will,  excel 
Ten  metropolitans  in  preaching  well "  ) 

"  attended  his  meeting  one  Sunday  evening ; "  and 
very  naturally,  not  being  acquainted  with  Dr.  Foster's 
person,  sketched  a  likeness  of  the  clergyman  whom  he 
found  officiating ;  which  clergyman  happened  unfortu- 
nately to  be  —  not  the  doctor  —  but  Mr.  Morris,  an 
occasional  substitute  of  his.  The  mistake  remained 
undiscovered :  the  sketch  was  elaborately  copied  in  a 
regular  picture ;  the  picture  was  elaborately  engraved 
n  mezzotinto  ;  and  to  this  day  the  portrait  of  one  Mr. 
Morris  "  officiates  "  for  that  of  the  celebrated  Dr.  Fos- 
ter. Living  and  dead  he  was  Dr.  Foster's  substitute. 
Even  this,  however,  is  a  trifle  to  what  follows :  the  case 
•'  of  a  Baronet,  who  must  be  nameless,  who  proposed  to 
visit  Rome,  and  previously  to  learn  the  language  ;  but 
ty  some  mistake,  or  imposition,  engaged  a  German, 
▼ho  taught  only  his  own  language,  and  proceeded  in 
Jie  study  of  it  vigorously  for  three  months  before  h« 
iigcovered  H«  error."     With  all  deference  to  the  au 


562 


ANECDOTAGE. 


thority  of  Horace  Walpole,  from  whom  the  anecdote 
originally  comes,  we  confess  that  we  are  staggered; 
and  must  take  leave,  in  the  stoical  phrase,  to  "  sus- 
pend ; "  in  fact,  we  must  consult  our  friends  before  we 
can  contract  for  believing  it ;  at  present,  all  we  shall 
say  about  it  is,  that  we  greatly  fear  the  Baronet 
"  must,"  as  Miss  Hawkins  observes,  "  be  nameless." 

"We  must  also  consult  our  friends  on  the  propriety  of 
believing  the  little  incident  which  follows,  though  at- 
tributed to  "  a  very  worthy  modest  young  man  :  "  for  it 
is  remarkable  that  of  this  very  modest  young  man  is 
recorded  but  one  act,  viz.,  the  most  impudent  in  the 
book.  "  He  was  walking  in  the  Mall  of  St.  James's 
Park,  when  they  met  two  fine  young  women,  drest  in 
straw  hats,  and,  at  least  to  appearance,  unattended. 
His  friend  offered  him  a  bet  that  he  did  not  go  up  to  one 
of  those  rustic  beauties,  and  salute  her.  He  accepted 
the  bet ;  and  in  a  very  civil  manner,  and  probably  ex- 
plaining the  cause  of  his  boldness,  he  thought  himself 
sure  of  success,  when  he  became  aware  that  it  was  the 
Princess  Caroline,  daughter  of  George  II.  who,  with 
one  of  her  sisters,  was  taking  the  refreshment  of  a  walk 
in  complete  disguise.  In  the  utmost  confusion  he 
bowed,  begged  pardon,  and  retreated ;  whilst  their 
Royal  Highnesses,  with  great  good  humor,  laughed  at 
his  mistake." 

"We  shall  conclude  our  extracts  with  the  following 
story,  as  likely  to  interest  our  fair  readers  :  — 

"  Lady  Lucy  Meyrick  was  by  birth  the  Lady  Lucy 
Pitt,  daughter  to  the  Earl  of  Londonderry,  and  sister 
to  the  last  who  bore  that  title.  She  was,  of  course 
Mwrly  related  to  all  the  great  families  of  that  name 


ANECDOTAGK.  568 

nd  losing  her  parents  very  early  in  life,  was  left 
inder  the  guardianship  of  an  uncle,  who  lived  in  James 
Street,  Buckingham  Gate.  This  house  was  a  most  sin- 
gularly uncouth  dismal  dwelling,  in  appearance  very 
much  of  the  Vanburgh  style  of  building ;  and  the  very 
sight  of  it  would  justify  almost  any  measure  to  get  out 
of  it.  It  excited  every  one's  curiosity  to  ask,  What  is 
this  place  ?  What  can  it  be  for  ?  It  had  a  front  of  very 
dark  heavy  brick-work ;  very  small  windows,  with 
sashes  immensely  thick.  In  this  gay  mansion,  which 
looked  against  the  blank  window  side  of  the  large  house 
in  St.  James's  Park,  twenty  years  ago  Lord  Milford's, 
but  backwards  into  a  market-gardener's  ground,  was 
Lady  Lucy  Meyrick  to  reside  with  her  uncle  and  his 
daughter,  a  girl  a  little  older  than  herself.  The  young 
ladies,  who  had  formed  a  strict  friendship,  were  kept 
under  great  restraint,  which  they  bore  as  two  lively 
girls  may  be  supposed  to  have  done.  Their  endurances 
soon  reached  the  ear  of  two  Westminster  scholars  of 
one  of  the  Welsh  families  of  Meyrick,  who,  in  the  true 
Bpirit  of  knight-errantry,  concerted  with  them  a  plan 
for  escaping,  which  they  carried  into  effect.  Having 
gone  thus  far,  there  was  nothing  for  the  courteous 
knights  to  do,  but  to  marry  the  fair  damsels  to  whom 
they  had  rendered  this  essential  service  ;  and  for  this 
purpose  they  took  them  to  the  Fleet,  or  to  May-Fair, 
in  both  which  places  marriages  were  solemnized  in  the 
utmost  privacy.  Here  the  two  couples  presented 
themselves ;  a  baker's  wife  attending  upon  the  ladies, 
-lady  Lucy  was  then,  and  to  the  end  of  her  life,  one  of 
the  smallest  women  I  ever  saw :  she  was  at  the  same 
time  not  more  than  fourteen  years  of  age ;  and,  being 


564 


ANECDOTAGE. 


in  the  dress  of  a  child,  the  person  officiating  objecte'd 
to  performing  the  ceremony  for  her.  This  extraordi- 
nary scrupulosity  was  distressing ;  but  her  ladyship  met 
it  by  a  lively  reply  —  that  her  cousin  might  be  married 
first,  and  then  lend  her  her  gown,  which  would  make 
her  look  more  womanly :  but  I  suppose  her  right  of 
precedence  was  regarded ;  for  she  used  to  say  herself 
that  she  was  at  last  married  in  the  baker's  wife's  gown. 
Yet  even  now,  if  report  be  true,  an  obstacle  intervened : 
the  young  ladies  turned  fickle ;  not,  indeed,  on  the 
question  '  to  be  or  not  to  be '  married,  but  on  their  choice 
of  partners ;  and  I  was  assured  that  they  actually 
changed  —  Lady  Lucy  taking  to  herself,  or  acquiescing 
in  taking,  the  elder  brother.  What  their  next  step  was 
to  have  been  I  know  not:  the  ladies,  who  had  not  been 
missed,  returned  to  their  place  of  endurance ;  the  young 
gentlemen  to  school,  where  they  remained,  keeping  the 
secret  close.  When  the  school  next  broke  up,  they 
went  home :  and,  probably,  whilst  waiting  for  courage 
to  avow,  or  opportunity  to  disclose,  or  accident  to  be- 
tray for  them  the  matter,  a  newly  arrived  guest  fresh 
from  London,  in  reply,  perhaps,  to  the  usual  question 
•—What  news  from  town  ?  reported  an  odd  story  of  two 
Westminster  scholars,  names  unknown,  who  had  (it  wa« 
6aid)  married  two  girls  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
Bchool.  The  countenances  of  the  two  lads  drew  sus- 
picions upon  them ;  and,  confession  being  made.  Lady 
Lucy  was  fetched  to  the  house  of  her  father-in-law, 
His  lady,  seeing  her  so  very  much  of  a  child  in  appear, 
ance,  said,  on  receiving  her,  in  a  tone  of  vexation  — 
Why,  child,  what  can  we  do  with  you  ?  Such  a  baby 
M  you  are,  what  can  you  know  ? '     With  equal  humi)' 


AMUCDOTAOB.  565 

rty  and  frankness  Lady  Lucy  replied — 'It  is  rery  true^ 
Madam,  that  I  am  very  young  and  very  ignorant;  but 
whatever  you  will  teach  me  I  will  learn.'  All  the 
good  lady's  prejudice  was  now  overcome ;  and  Lady 
Lucy's  conduct  proved  the  sincerity  of  her  submission. 
She  lived  seven  years  in  "Wales  under  the  tuition  oi 
her  mother-in-law,  conforming  to  the  manners,  tempers, 
and  prejudices  of  her  new  relations." 

We  have  now  "squeezed"  a  volume  of  351  pages, 
according  to  our  promise :  we  hope  Miss  Hawkins  will 
forgive  us.  She  must  also  forgive  us  for  gently  blam- 
ing her  diction.  She  says  (p.  277),  "  I  read  but  little 
English."  We  thought  as  much ;  and  wish  she  read 
more.  The  words  "duple"  (p.  145),  "decadence" 
(p.  123),  and  "  cumbent "  (p.  ),  all  point  to  another 
language  than  English  :  as  to  "  maux "  (p.  254),  we 
know  not  what  language  it  belongs  to,  unless  it  be 
Coptic.  It  is  certainly  not  "  too  big  for  an  island  ; " 
but  it  will  not  do  for  this  island,  and  we  beg  it  may  be 
transported.  Miss  Hawkins  says  a  worse  thing,  how- 
ever, of  the  English  language,  than  that  she  reads  it 
but  little :  "  instead  of  admiring  my  native  language," 
says  she,  "  I  feel  fettered  by  it."  That  may  be  :  but 
her  inability  to  use  it  without  diflSculty  and  constraint 
is  the  very  reason  why  she  ought  not  to  pronounce 
upon  its  merits :  we  cannot  allow  of  any  person's  de- 
ciding on  the  value  of  an  instrument  until  he  has  shown 
himself  master  of  its  powers  in  their  whole  compass. 
For  some  purposes  (and  those  the  highest),  the  English 
language  is  a  divine  instrument :  no  language  is  so  for 
ftU. 

When   Miss   Hawkins  say)»   chat  she  reads  "  little 


>66 


ANECDOTAQE. 


English,"  the  form  of  the  expression  implies  that  «he 
reads  a  good  deal  of  some  more  favored  language :  may 
we  take  the  liberty  of  asking  —  whai?  It  is  not  Welsh, 
we  hope  ?  nor  Syriac?  nor  Sungskrita?  We  say  hopf., 
for  none  of  these  will  yield  her  anything  for  her  next 
volume :  throughout  the  Asiatic  Researches  no  soul 
has  been  able  to  unearth  a  Sanscrit  bon-mot.  Is  it 
Latin  ?  or  Greek  ?  Perhaps  both :  for  besides  some 
Bprinklings  of  both  throughout  the  volume,  she  gives 
OS  at  the  end  several  copies  of  Latin  and  Greek  verses. 
These,  she  says,  are  her  brother's  :  be  they  whose  they 
may,  we  must  overhaul  them.  The  Latin  are  chiefly 
Sapphics,  the  Greek  chiefly  Iambics  ;  the  following  is 
%  specimen  of  the  Sapphics :  — 

"  One  a  penny,  two  a  penny,  hot  cross  buns ; 
If  your  daughters  will  not  eat  them,  give  them  to  your  Bons. 
But,  if  you  have  none  of  those  pietty  little  elves, 
You  cannot  do  better  than  eat  them  yourselves." 
'  Idem  Latine  redditum  a  Viro  Clariss.     Henrico  Hawkins. 
"  Asse  placentam  cupiasne  solam  ? 
Asse  placentas  cupiasne  binas  ? 
Ecce  placentae,  tenerse,  tepentes, 
Et  cruce  gratae, 
"  Respuant  natae  ?  dato,  quaeso,  natis: 
Parvulos  tales  tibi  si  negarint 
Fata,  tu  tandem  (superest  quid  ultra?) 
Sumito,  praesto  est." 

Our  opinion  of  this  translation  is,  that  it  is  worthy 
of  the  original.  We  hope  this  criticism  will  prove  sat- 
isfactory. At  the  same  time,  without  offence  to  Mr. 
Hawkins,  may  we  suggest  that  the  baker's  man  has 
rather  the  advantage  in  delicacy  of  expression  and 
iTuscture  of  verse?  He  has  also  distinguished  clearly 
the  alternative  of  sons  and  daughters,  which  the  iii> 


ANECDOTAGE.  547 

fortanate  ambiguity  of  "  natis "  has  prevented  Mr. 
Hawkins  from  doing.  Perhaps  Mr.  Hawkins  will  con- 
Bider  this  against  a  future  edition.  Another,  viz.,  a 
single  hexameter,  is  entitled,  "  De  Amanda,  clavibus 
amissis."  Here  we  must  confess  to  a  signal  mortifica^ 
tion,  the  table  of  "  Contents  "  having  prepared  us  to 
look  for  some  sport ;  for  the  title  is  there  printed  (by 
mistake,  as  it  turns  out),  "De  Amanda,  clavis  amissis," 
i.  e.,  On  Amanda,  upon  the  loss  of  her  cudgels  ;  whereas 
it  ought  to  have  been  clavibus  amissis,  on  the  loss  ot 
her  keys.  Shenstone  used  to  thank  God  that  his  name 
was  not  adapted  to  the  vile  designs  of  the  punster; 
perhaps  some  future  punster  may  take  the  conceit  out 
of  him  on  that  point  by  extracting  a  compound  pun 
from  his  name  combined  with  some  other  word.  The 
next  best  thing,  however,  to  having  a  name,  or  title, 
that  is  absolutely  pun-proof,  is  the  having  one  which 
yields  only  to  Greek  puns,  or  Carthaginian  (i.  e 
Punic)  puns.  Lady  Moira  has  that  felicity,  on  whom 
Mr.  Hawkins  has  thus  punned  very  seriously  in  a 
Greek  hexameter :  — 

"  On  the  death  of  the  Countess  of  Moira's  new-born  infant. 

"  Moipa  koAt),  /i'  ereices'  fi  aveX.es  fi*v,  Moipa  (cparacij." 

That  is :  "  Lovely  Moira,  thou  gavest  me  birth  :  thou 
also,  violent  Moira,  tookest  me  away  : "  where  the  first 
Moipa  means  the  Countess,  the  second  is  the  Greek  term 
for  mortal  destiny. 

Of  the  iambics  we  shall  give  one  specimen  :  — 

"  Impromptu  returned  with  my  ead  pencil,  which  I  had  left  Of 
Vi  Uble. 

"  3or)doi  eifii,'  KaAAjtu  vavr  e(  e^ov  * 
'K«  Tov  iLoXtpSov  i)  foqcrtt  epx'Toi." 


568  ANECDOTAGE. 

Pencil  is  supposed  to  speak :  — 

^  I  am  a  ministerial  assistant :  from  me  come  all 
things  beautiful.  And  thus  from  lead  comes  intellec- 
tual light."  The  second  clause  will  bear  another  ver- 
Bion,  which  does  not  heal  its  exaggeration,  in  represent- 
ing all  beauty  as  a  product  of  the  lead  pencil.  And 
molibdos,  we  fear,  which  means  the  common  household 
lead  of  cisterns,  tubes,  etc.,  will  not  express  the  plum' 
hago  of  the  artist's  pencil. 

The  thought  is  pretty  :  some  little  errors  there  cer- 
tainly are,  as  in  the  contest  with  the  baker's  man ;  and  in 
this,  as  in  all  his  iambics  (especially  in  the  three  from  the 
Arabic),  some  little  hiatuses  in  the  metre,  not  adapted 
to  the  fastidious  race  of  an  Athenian  audience.  But 
these  little  hiatuses,  these  "  little  enormities  "  (to  bor- 
row a  phrase  from  the  sermon  of  a  country  clergyman), 
will  occur  in  the  best  regulated  verses.  On  the  whole, 
our  opinion  of  Mr.  Hawkins,  as  a  Greek  poet,  is,  that 
in  seven  hundred,  or  say  seven  hundred  and  fifty  years 
—  he  may  become  a  pretty  —  yes,  we  will  say,  a  very 
pretty  poet :  as  he  cannot  be  more  than  one  tenth  of 
that  age  at  present,  we  look  upon  his  performances  as 
singularly  promising.  Tantae  molis  erat  Bomanam 
\X)ndere  gentem."^ 

To  return  to  Miss  Hawkins  ;  there  are  some  blunders 
n  facta  up  and  down  her  book :  such,  for  instance,  as 
that  of  supposing  Sir  Francis  Drake  to  have  com- 
manded in  the  succession  of  engagements  with  the 
Spanish  Armada  of  1588  ;  which  is  the  more  remark- 
able, as  her  own  ancestor  was  so  distinguished  a  person 
in  those  engagements.  But,  upon  the  whole,  her  work, 
€  weeded  of  some  trifling  tales  (as  what  relates  to  th« 


ANECDOTAGK. 


569 


young  Marquis  of  Tweeddale's  dress,  etc.),  is  creditable 
to  her  talents.  Her  opportunities  of  observation  have 
been  great ;  she  has  generally  made  good  use  of  them  ; 
and  her  tact  for  the  ludicrous  is  striking  and  useful  in 
a  book  of  this  kind.  We  hope  that  she  will  soon  favor 
us  with  a  second  volume ,  and,  in  that  case,  we  cannot 
doubt  that  we  shall  again  have  an  orange  to  8qaeez« 
for  the  public  use. 


NOTES. 


NoTB  1.    Page  9. 

Me.  Campbell,  the  latest  editor  of  Shakspeare's  dnuoutic 
irorks,  observes  that  '  the  poet's  name  has  been  variously  written 
Bhaxpeare,  Shackspeare,  Shakspeare,  and  Shakspere  : '  to  which 
varieties  might  be  added  Shagspere,  from  the  Worcester  Marriage 
License,  published  in  1836.  But  the  fact  is,  that  by  combining 
with  all  the  differences  in  spelling  the  first  syllable,  all  those  in 
spelling  the  second,  more  than  twenty-five  distinct  varieties  of  the 
name  may  be  expanded,  (like  an  algebraic  series,)  for  the  choice  of 
the  curious  in  mis-spelling.  Above  all  things,  those  varieties 
which  arise  from  the  intercalation  of  the  middle  e,  (that  is,  the  e 
immediately  before  the  final  syllable  spear,)  can  never  be  over- 
looked by  those  who  remember,  at  the  opening  of  the  Dunciad, 
the  note  upon  this  very  question  about  the  orthography  of  Shak- 
speare's  name,  as  also  upon  the  other  great  question  about  the 
title  of  the  immortal  Satire,  Whether  it  ought  not  to  have  been 
the  Dunceiade,  seeing  that  Dunce,  its  great  author  and  progeni- 
tor, cannot  possibly  dispense  with  the  letter  e.  Meantime  we 
must  remark,  that  the  first  three  of  Mr.  Campbell's  variations  are 
mere  caprices  of  the  press;  as  is  Shagspere;  or,  more  probably, 
this  last  euphonious  variety  arose  out  of  the  gross  clownish  pro- 
nunciation of  the  two  hiccuping  '  marksmen  '  who  rode  over  to 
Worcester  for  the  license ;  and  one  cannot  forbear  laughing  at  the 
oishop's  secretary  for  having  been  so  misled  by  two  varlets,  pro- 
fessedly incapable  of  signing  their  own  names.  The  same  drunken 
fillains  had  cut  down  the  bride's  name  Hathaway  into  Hathwey. 
finally,  to  treat  the  matter  with  seriousness,  Sir  Frederick  Mad- 
den hag  shown,  in  his  recent  letter  to  the  Society  of  Antiquaries, 
Ihat  the  poet  himself  in  all  probability  wrote  the  name  onilbrmlj 


S72  K0TK8. 

Shaksperi.  Orthography,  both  of  proper  names,  of  appellatives, 
and  of  words  universally,  was  very  unsettled  up  to  a  period  long 
subsequent  to  that  of  Shakspeare.  Still  it  must  usually  have 
happened  that  names  written  variously  and  laxly  by  others,  would 
be  written  uniformly  by  the  owners;  especially  by  those  owners 
who  had  occasion  to  sign  their  names  frequently,  and  by  literary 
people,  whose  attention  was  often,  as  well  as  consciously,  directed 
to  the  proprieties  of  spelling.  Shakspeare  is  now  too  familiar  to 
the  eye  for  any  alteration  to  be  attempted ;  but  it  is  pretty  cer- 
tain that  Sir  Frederick  Madden  is  right  in  stating  the  poet's  own 
signature  to  have  been  uniformly  Shakspere.  It  is  so  written 
twice  in  the  course  of  his  will,  and  it  is  so  written  on  a  blank  leaf 
of  Florio's  English  translation  of  Montaigne's  Essays;  a  book 
recently  discovered,  and  sold,  on  account  of  its  autograph,  for  a 
hundred  guineas. 

Note  2.  Page  10. 
But,  as  a  proof  that,  even  in  the  case  of  royal  christenings,  it 
was  not  thought  pious  to  ♦  tempt  God, '  as  it  were  by  delay,  Edward 
VI.,  the  only  son  of  Henry  VTII.,  was  bom  on  the  12th  day  of 
October,  in  the  year  1537.  And  there  was  a  delay  on  account  of 
the  sponsors,  since  the  birth  was  not  in  London.  Yet  how  little 
that  delay  was  made,  may  be  seen  by  this  fact :  The  birth  took 
place  in  the  dead  of  the  night,  the  day  was  Friday  ;  and  yet,  in 
spite  of  all  delay,  the  christening  was  most  pompously  celebrated 
on  the  succeeding  Monday.  And  Prince  Arthur,  the  elder 
brother  of  Henry  VIII.,  was  christened  on  the  very  next  Sunday 
succeeding  to  his  birth,  notwithstanding  an  inevitable  delay,  occa- 
sioned by  the  distance  of  Lord  Oxford,  his  godfather,  and  the  ex- 
cessive rains,  which  prevented  the  earl  being  rejwhed  by  couriers, 
or  himself  reaching  Winchester,  without  extraordinary  exertions. 

Note  3.    Page  17. 
A  great  modem  poet  refers  to  this  very  case  of  music  entering 
Ae  mouldy  chambers  of  the  dull  idiot's  brain  ; '  but  in  support 
•f  what  seems  to  us  a  baseless  hypothesis. 

NoTB  4.    Page  18. 
Probably  Addison's  fear  of  the  national  f««liinr  won  a  good  deal 


K0TE8.  573 

Strengthened  bj  his  awe  of  Milton  and  of  Dryden,  both  of  whoa 
had  expressed  a  homage  towards  Shakspeare  which  language 
cannot  transcend.  Amongst  his  political  friends  also  were  manj 
intense  admirers  of  Shakspeare. 

Note  6.  Page  20. 
He  who  is  weak  enough  to  kick  and  spurn  his  own  native  liter- 
ature, even  if  it  were  done  with  more  knowledge  than  is  shows 
Dy  Lord  Shaftesbury,  will  usually  be  kicked  and  spumed  in  hi* 
turn;  and  accordingly  it  has  often  been  remarked  that  the  Char, 
acteristics  are  unjustly  neglected  in  our  days.  For  Lord  Shafes- 
bury,  with  all  his  pedantry,  was  a  man  of  great  talents.  Leibnitz 
had  the  sagacity  to  see  this  through  the  mists  of  a  translation. 

Note  6.  Page  21. 
Perhaps  the  most  bitter  political  enemy  of  Charles  I.  will  have 
the  candor  to  allow  that,  for  a  prince  of  those  times,  he  was  truly 
and  eminently  accomplished.  His  knowledge  of  the  arts  was  con- 
siderable; and,  as  a  patron  of  art,  he  stands  foremost  amongst 
all  British  sovereigns  to  this  hour.  He  said  truly  of  himself,  and 
wisely  as  to  the  principle,  that  he  understood  English  law  as  well 
as  a  gentleman  ought  to  understand  it ;  meaning  that  an  attorney's 
minute  knowledge  of  forms  and  technical  niceties  was  illiberal. 
Speaking  of  him  as  an  author,  we  must  remember  that  the  Eikon 
Basilike  is  still  unappropriated ;  that  question  is  still  open.  But 
supposing  the  king's  claim  negatived,  still,  in  his  controversy  with 
Henderson,  in  his  negotiations  at  the  Isle  of  Wight  and  elsewhere, 
he  discovered  a  power  of  argument,  a  learning  and  a  strength  of 
memory,  which  are  truly  admirable;  whilst  the  whole  of  his  ac- 
complishments are  recommended  by  a  modesty  and  a  humility  aa 
rare  as  they  are  unaffected. 

Note  7.  Page  25. 
The  necessity  of  compression  obliges  us  to  omit  many  argu- 
vxents  and  references  by  which  we  could  demonstrate  the  fact,  that 
Shakspeare's  reputation  was  always  in  a  progressive  state ;  allow 
ing  oidy  for  the  interruption  of  about  seventeen  years ,  which  thii 
poet,  in  common  with  all  others,  sustained,  not  so  much  from  the 
ttate  of  war,  (which  did  not  fully  occupy  four  of  those  years,)  a. 


>«  4  NOTSS. 

from  the  triumph  of  a  gloomy  fanaticism.  Deduct  the  tweiitj  • 
three  years  of  the  seventeenth  century,  which  had  elapsed  befor* 
the  first  folio  appeared,  to  this  space  add  seventeen  years  of  £v> 
natical  madness,  during  fourteen  of  vrhich  all  dramatic  entertain- 
ments were  suppressed,  the  remainder  is  sixty  years.  And  surely 
the  sale  of  four  editions  of  a  vast  folio  in  that  space  of  time  was 
an  expression  of  an  abiding  interest.  JVo  other  poet,  except 
Spenser,  continued  to  sell  throughout  the  century.  Besides,  in 
arguing  the  case  of  a  dramatic  poet,  we  must  bear  in  mind,  that 
although  readers  of  learned  books  might  be  diffused  over  the  face 
of  the  land,  and  readers  of  poetry  would  be  chiefly  concentrated 
in  the  metropolis;  and  such  persons  would  have  no  need  to  buy 
what  they  heard  at  the  theatres.  But  then  comes  the  question, 
whether  Shakspeare  kept  possession  of  the  theatres.  And  we  are 
really  humiliated  by  the  gross  want  of  sense  which  has  been 
Bhown,  by  Malone  chiefly,  but  also  by  many  others,  in  discussing 
this  question.  From  the  Restoration  to  1 682,  says  Malone,  no 
more  than  four  plays  of  Shakspeare's  were  performed  by  a  piin- 
cipal  company  in  London.  '  Such  was  the  lamentable  taste  of 
those  times,  that  the  plays  of  Fletcher,  Jonson,  and  Shirley,  wtre 
much  oftener  exhibited  than  those  of  oxir  author.'  What  cant  is 
this  !  If  that  taste  were  •  lamentable,'  what  are  we  to  think  of  our 
own  times,  when  plays  a  thousand  times  below  those  of  Fletcher, 
or  even  of  Shirley,  continually  displace  Shakspeare  ?  Shakspearo 
would  himself  have  exulted  in  finding  that  he  gave  way  only  to  dra- 
matists so  excellent.  And,  as  we  have  before  observed,  both  then 
and  now,  it  is  the  very  familiarity  with  Shakspeare,  which  often 
banishes  him  from  audiences  honestly  in  quest  of  relaxation  and 
amusement .  Novelty  is  the  very  soul  of  such  relaxation ;  but  in  our 
closets,  when  we  are  not  unbending,  when  our  minds  are  in  a  state 
of  tension  from  intellectual  cravings,  then  it  is  that  we  resort  to 
•Shakspeare  :  and  oftentimes  those  who  honor  him  most,  like  our- 
belves,  are  the  most  impatient  of  seeing  his  divine  scenes  disfigured 
by  unequal  representation,  (good,  perhaps,  in  a  single  persona- 
tion, bad  in  all  the  rest;)  or  to  hear  his  divine  thoughts  mangled 
in  the  recitation ;  or,  (which  is  worst  of  all  )  to  hear  them  dis- 
honored  and  defeated  by  imperlect  apprehension  in  the  audience, 
or  by  defective  sympathy.  Meantime,  if  one  theatre  played  only 
t**ir  «f  Shakspeare's  dramas,  another  played  at  least  seven.     Bat 


NOTES.  575 

the  grossest  &ult  of  Malone  is,  in  fancying  the  numerous  altera>- 
tions  so  many  insults  to  Shakspeare,  whereas  they  expressed  as 
much  homage  to  his  memory  as  if  the  unaltered  dramas  had  been 
retained.  The  substance  was  retained.  The  changes  were  merely 
concessions  to  the  changing  views  of  scenical  propriety;  som^ 
times,  no  doubt,  made  with  a  simple  view  to  the  revolution  ef- 
fected by  Davenant  at  the  Bestoration,  in  bringing  scenes  (in  the 
painter's  sense)  upon  the  stage;  sometimes  also  with  a  view  to 
the  altered  fashions  of  the  audience  during  the  suspensions  of  the 
iction,  or  perhaps  to  the  introduction  of  after-pieces,  by  which, 
of  course,  the  time  was  abridged  for  the  main  performance.  A 
volume  might  be  written  upon  this  subject.  Meantime  let  us 
never  be  told,  that  a  poet  was  losing,  or  had  lost  his  ground,  who 
found  in  his  lowest  depression,  amongst  bis  almost  idolatrous 
supporters,  a  great  king  distracted  by  civil  wars,  a  mighty  re- 
publican poet  distracted  by  puritanical  fanaticism,  the  greatest 
successor  by  far  of  that  great  poet,  a  papist  and  a  bigoted  royal- 
ist, and  finally,  the  leading  actor  of  the  century,  who  gave  and 
i-efiected  the  ruling  impulses  of  his  age. 

Note  8.  Page  27. 
One  of  the  profoundest  tests  by  which  we  can  measure  the  con- 
geniality of  an  author  with  the  national  genius  and  temper,  is  the 
degree  in  which  his  thoughts  or  his  phrases  interweave  themselves 
with  our  daily  conversation,  and  pass  into  the  currency  of  the 
language.  Few  French  authors,  if  any,  have  imparted  one  phrase 
io  the  colloquial  idiom  ;  with  respect  to  Shakspeare,  a  large  dic- 
tionary might  be  made  of  such  phrases  as  '  win  golden  opinions,' 
'  in  my  mind's  eye,'  '  patience  on  a  monument,'  '  o'erstep  the 
modesty  of  nature,'  *  more  honor'd  in  the  breach  than  in  th« 
observance,'  '  palmy  state,'  '  my  poverty  and  not  my  will  con- 
sents,' and  so  forth,  without  end.  This  reinforcement  of  the 
general  language,  by  aids  from  the  mintage  of  Shakspeare,  had 
already  commenced  in  the  seventeenth  century. 

Note  9.     Page  28 
In  feet,  by  way  of  representing  to  himself  the  system  or  scheme 
tl  the  English  roads,  the  reader  has  only  to  imagine  one  greal 
«tter  X,  or  a  St.  Andrew's  cross,  laid  down  from  north  to  sooth 


576  NOTES, 

BJid  decussating  at  Birmingham.  Even  Coventry,  which  xnakea 
a  slight  variation  for  one  or  two  roads,  and  so  far  disturbs  thit 
decussation,  by  shifting  it  eastwards,  is  still  in  Warwickshire. 

NoTB  10.    Page  34. 
And  probably  so  called  by  some  remote  ancestor  who  had  emi- 
grated from  the  forest  of  Ardennes,  in  the  Netherlands,  and  nou 
forever  memorable  to  English  ears  from  its  proximity  to  Waterloo 

NoTK  11.  I'age  36. 
Let  not  the  reader  impute  to  us  the  gross  anachronism  of  mak- 
ing an  estimate  for  Shakspeare's  days  in  a  coin  which  did  not 
exist  until  a  century,  within  a  couple  of  years,  after  Shakspeare's 
birth,  and  did  not  settle  to  the  value  of  twenty-one  shillings  until 
a  century  after  his  death.  The  nerve  of  such  an  anachronism 
would  lie  in  putting  the  estimate  into  a  mouth  of  that  age.  And 
this  is  precisely  the  blunder  into  which  the  foolish  forger  of 
Vortigern,  &c.,  has  fallen.  He  does  not  indeed  directly  mention 
guineas ;  but  indirectly  and  virtually  he  does,  by  repeatedly  giving 
OS  accounts  imputed  to  Shakspearian  contemporaries,  in  which 
the  sum  total  amounts  to  £6  6«.;  or  to  £26  5«. ;  or,  again,  to 
£17  17«.  &d.  A  man  is  careful  to  subscribe  £14  14s.,  and  sc 
forth.  But  how  could  such  amounts  have  arisen  unless  under  a 
secret  reference  to  guineas,  which  were  not  in  existence  until 
Charles  II.' 8  reign;  and,  moreover,  to  guineas  at  their  final  set- 
tlement by  law  into  twenty-one  shillings  each,  which  did  not 
take  place  until  George  I.'s  reign  ? 

Note  12.     Page  36. 
Thomas  Campbell,  the  poet,  in  his  eloquent  Remarks  on  the 
Lifi]  and  Writings  of  William  Shakspeare,  prefixed  to  a  popular 
edition  of  the  poet's  dramatic  works.     London,  1838. 

Note  13.  Page  87. 
After  all  the  assistance  given  to  such  equations  between  differ- 
ent times  or  different  places  by  Sir  George  Shuckborough'e 
tables,  and  other  similar  investigations,  it  is  still  a  very  diflBcult 
problem,  complex,  and,  after  all,  merely  tentative  in  the  results, 
to  assign  the  tme  value  in  such  cases ;  not  only  for  the  obvioui 


KOTES.  577 

-rason,  that  the  powers  of  money  have  varied  in  diflFerent  direc- 
tions with  regard  to  different  objects,  and  in  different  degreei 
where  the  direction  has  on  the  whole  continued  the  same,  but 
because  the  very  objects  to  be  taken  into  computation  are  so  inde- 
terminate, and  vary  so  much,  not  only  as  regards  century  and 
century,  kingdom  and  kingdom,  but  also,  even  in  the  same  cen 
tury  and  the  same  kingdom,  as  regards  rank  and  rank.  That 
which  is  a  mere  necessary  to  one,  is  a  luxurious  superfluity  to 
another.  And,  in  order  to  ascertain  these  differences,  it  is  an 
indispensable  qualification  to  have  studied  the  habits  and  customs 
of  the  several  classes  concerned,  together  with  the  variations  of 
those  habits  and  customs. 

NoTB  14.  Page  45. 
Never  was  the  esse  quam  vidert  in  any  point  more  stron^y 
discriminated  than  in  this  very  point  of  gallantry  to  the  female 
sex,  as  between  England  and  France.  In  France,  the  verbal 
homage  to  woman  is  so  excessive  as  to  betray  its  real  purpose, 
viz.,  that  it  is  a  mask  for  secret  contempt.  In  England,  little  is 
said ;  but,  in  the  meantime,  we  allow  our  sovereign  ruler  to  be 
a  woman;  which  in  France  is  impossible.  Even  that  fact  is  of 
some  importance,  but  less  so  than  what  follows.  In  every  coun- 
try whatsoever,  if  any  principle  has  a  deep  root  in  the  moral 
feelings  of  the  people,  we  may  rely  upon  its  showing  itself,  by  a 
thousand  evidences  amongst  the  very  lowest  ranks,  and  in  their 
daily  intercourse,  and  their  undress  manners.  Now  in  England 
there  is,  and  always  has  been,  a  manly  feeling,  most  widely 
diffused,  of  unwillingness  to  see  labors  of  a  coarse  order,  gr 
requiring  muscular  exertions,  thrown  upon  women.  Pauperism, 
amongst  other  evil  effects,  has  sometimes  locally  disturbed  this 
predominating  sentiment  of  Englishmen ;  but  never  at  any  tim« 
with  such  depth  as  to  kill  the  root  of  the  old  hereditary  manli- 
ness. Sometimes  at  this  day,  a  gentleman,  either  from  careless, 
ness,  or  from  overruling  force  of  convenience,  or  from  real  defect 
vf  gallantry,  will  allow  a  female  servant  to  carry  his  portmanteau 
for  him,  though,  after  all,  that  spectacle  is  a  rare  one.  And 
♦verjrwhere  women  of  all  ages  engage  in  the  pleasant,  nay  elegant, 
labors  of  the  hay-field;  but  in  Great  Britain  women  are  nev** 
■a&red  to  mow,  which  is  a  most  athletic  and  exhausting  labo* 
37 


578  VOTES. 

Mr  to  load  a  cart,  nor  to  drive  a  plough  or  hold  \t.     In  Franoft, 

•n  the  other  hand,  before  the  Revolution,  (at  which  period  th( 
pseudo-homage,  the  lip-honor,  wa3  far  more  ostentatiously  pro- 
fessed towards  the  female  sex  than  at  present,)  a  Frenchman  of 
credit,  and  vouching  for  his  statement  by  the  whole  weight  of  his 
name  and  personal  responsibility,  (M.  Simoud,  now  an  American 
citizen,)  records  the  following  abominable  scene  as  one  of  no 
uncommon  occurrence.  A  woman  was  in  some  provinces  yoked 
lide  by  side  with  an  ass  to  the  plough  or  the  harrow;  and  M. 
Simond  protests  that  it  excited  no  horror  to  see  the  driver  dis- 
tributing his  lashes  impartially  between  the  woman  and  her  brat« 
yoke-fellow.  So  much  for  the  wordy  pomps  of  French  gallantry 
In  England ,  we  trust,  and  we  believe,  that  any  man  caught  in 
such  a  situation,  and  in  such  an  abuse  of  his  power,  (supposing 
the  case  otherwise  a  possible  one,)  would  be  killed  on  the  spot 

Note  16.  Page  48. 
Amongst  the  people  of  humble  rank  in  England,  who  only  were 
ever  asked  in  church,  until  the  new-fangled  systems  of  marriage 
same  up  within  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years,  during  the  currency 
of  the  three  Sundays  on  which  the  banns  were  proclaimed  by  the 
clergyman  from  the  reading  desk,  the  young  couple  el?ct  were 
said  jocosely  to  be  '  hanging  in  the  bell-ropes; '  alluding  perhaps 
to  the  joyous  peal  contingent  on  the  final  completion  of  the 
marriage. 

Note  16.  Page  60. 
.  In  a  little  memoir  of  Milton,  which  the  author  of  this  article 
drew  up  some  years  ago  for  a  public  society,  and  which  is  printed 
in  an  abridged  shape,*  he  took  occasion  to  remark,  that  Dr,  John* 
son,  who  was  meanly  anxious  to  revive  this  ylander  against  Mil- 
ton, as  well  as  some  others,  had  supposed  Milton  himself  to  have 
this  flagellation  in  his  mind,  and  indirectly  to  confess  it,  in  one 
of  ois  Latin  poems,  where,  speaking  of  Cambridge,  and  declaring 
that  he  has  no  longer  any  pleasure  in  the  thoughts  of  revisiting 
that  university,  he  says, 

'  Nee  dari  libet  usque  mmas  preferre  magistri 
Cateraque  ingenio  non  subeunda  mec. ' 
*  [See  page  89  of  this  volume.J 


ifoxEs.  579 

this  last  line  the  mAlicious  critic  would  translate  —  '  And  other 
things  insufferable  to  a  man  of  my  temper.'  But,  as  we  then 
observed,  ingenium  is  properly  expreasive  of  the  intellectual 
Bonstitution,  whilst  it  is  the  moral  constitution  that  suffers 
degradation  from  personal  chastisement  —  the  sense  of  honor,  of 
personal  dignity,  of  justice,  &c.  Indoles  is  the  proper  term  for 
this  latter  idea  ;  and  in  using  the  word  ingenium,  there  cannot 
be  a  doubt  that  Milton  alluded  to  the  dry  scholastic  disputations, 
which  were  shocking  and  odious  to  his  fine  poetical  genius.  If, 
therefore,  the  vile  story  is  still  to  be  kept  up  in  order  to  dishonor 
a  great  man,  at  any  rate  let  it  not  in  future  be  pretended  that 
any  countenance  to  such  a  slander  can  be  drawn  from  the  con- 
fessions of  the  poet  himselfl 

Note  17.  Page  68. 
And  singular  enough  it  is,  as  well  as  interesting,  that  Shak« 
speare  had  so  entirely  superseded  to  his  own  ear  and  memory  the 
name  Hamnet  by  the  dramatic  name  of  Hamlet,  that  in  writing 
his  will,  he  actually  misspells  the  name  of  his  friend  Sadler,  a^id 
calls  him  Hamlet.  His  son,  however,  who  should  have  familiar- 
ized the  true  name  to  his  ear,  had  then  been  dead  for  twenty 
years. 

Note  18.  Page  72. 
I  have  heard  that  Mr.  Shakspeare  was  a  natural  wit,  without 
anj  art  at  all.  Hee  frequented  the  plays  all  his  younger  time, 
but  in  his  elder  days  lived  at  Startford,  and  supplied  the  stage 
with  two  plays  every  year,  and  for  itt  had  an  allowance  so  large, 
that  he  spent  at  the  rate  of  £1,000  a  year,  as  I  have  heard. 
Shakespeare,  Drayton,  and  Ben  Jonson,  had  a  merie  meeting, 
ind  it  seems  drank  too  hard,  for  Shakespear  died  of  a  feavour 
there  contracted.'  (Diary  of  the  B«v.  John  Ward,  A.  M.,  Vicar 
ftf  Stratford-upon-Avon,  extending  from  1648  to  1679,  p.  188. 
liOnd.  1889,  8vo.) 

Note  19.    Page  72. 
It  is  naturally  to  be  supposed  ^hat  Dr.  Hall  would  attend  th« 
liek  bed  of  his  father-in-law  ;  and  the  discovery  of  this  gentle* 
sum's  medical  diary  promised  some  gratifioation  to  our  curioai^ 


(80  NOTES. 

•8  to  the  caus«  of  Shakspeare's  death.    Unfoiianately,  it  dow 
not  commence  until  the  year  1617. 

NoTB  20.  Page  78. 
An  exception  ought  perhaps  to  be  made  for  Sir  Walter  Soott 
uid  for  Cervantes;  bat  with  regard  to  all  other  writers,  Dante, 
•appose,  or  Ariosto  amongst  Italians,  Camoens  amongst  those  of 
Portugal,  Schiller  amongst  Germans,  however  ably  they  may 
have  been  naturalized  in  foreign  languages,  as  all  of  those  here 
mentioned  (excepting  only  Ariosto)  have  in  one  part  of  their 
works  beet  most  powerfully  naturalized  in  English,  it  still  re- 
mains true,  (and  the  very  sale  of  the  books  is  proof  sufficient,) 
that  an  alien  author  never  does  take  root  in  the  general  sympa- 
thies out  of  his  own  country;  he  takes  his  station  in  libraries,  h« 
is  read  by  the  man  of  learned  leisure,  he  is  known  and  valued  by 
the  refined  and  the  elegant,  but  he  is  not  (what  Shakspeare  is  for 
Germany  and  America)  in  any  proper  sense  a  popular  &vorite. 

Note  21.  Page  74. 
It  will  owvLT  to  many  readers,  that  perhaps  Homer  may  fhmish 
the  sole  exception  to  this  sweeping  assertion.  Any  but  Homer  ia 
olearly  and  ludicrously  below  the  level  of  the  competition;  but 
even  Homer,  '  with  his  tail  on,'  (as  the  Scottish  Highlanders 
say  of  their  chieftains  when  belted  by  their  ceremonial  retinues,) 
masters  nothing  like  the  force  which  already  follows  Shak- 
speare; and  be  it  remembered,  that  Homer  sleeps  and  has  long 
slept  as  a  subject  of  criticism  or  commentary,  while  in  Qermany 
as  well  as  England,  and  now  even  in  France,  the  gathering  of 
wits  to  the  vast  equipage  of  Shakspeare  is  advancing  in  an  accel- 
erated ratio.  There  is,  in  fact,  a  great  delusion  current  upon 
this  subject  Innumerable  references  to  Homer,  and  brief  critical 
remarks  on  this  or  that  pretension  of  Homer,  this  or  that  scene, 
this  or  that  passage,  lie  scattered  over  literature  ancient  and 
otodem;  but  the  express  works  dedicated  to  the  separate  servica 
yf  Homer  are,  after  all,  not  many.  In  Greek  we  have  only  the 
targe  Commentary  of  Eustathius,  and  the  Scholia  of  Didymus 
fco. ;  in  French  little  or  nothing  before  the  prose  translation  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  which  Pope  esteemed  '  elegant,'  and  th« 
■kiniushings  of  Madame  Dacier,  La  Motte,  &c.  ;  in  English,  bo 


NOTES.  581 

ddcfl  the  varioas  translations  and  their  pre&oes,  (which,  by  the 
tray,  began  as  early  as  1655,)  nothing  of  much  importance  ontil 
the  elaborate  preface  of  Pope  to  the  Iliad,  and  his  elaborate  post> 
script  to  the  Odyssey  —  nothing  certainly  before  that,  and  very 
little  indeed  since  that,  except  '^ood's  £ssay  on  the  Life  and 
Genius  of  Homer.  On  the  othei  nand,  cf  the  books  written  in 
illustration  or  investigation  of  Shakspeare,  a  very  sonsiderabla 
library  might  be  formed  in  England,  and  another  in  GK'rmany. 

NoTB  22.  Page  76. 
Apartment  is  here  used,  as  the  reader  will  observe,  in  its  true 
and  continental  acceptation,  as  a  division  or  compartment  of  a 
house  including  many  rooms;  a  suite  of  chambers,  but  a  suite 
which  is  partitioned  off,  (as  in  palaces,)  not  a  single  chamber;  a 
sense  so  commonly  and  so  erroneously  given  to  this  word  io 
England. 

NoTB  23.  Page  78. 
And  hence,  by  parity  of  reason,  under  the  opposite  circom 
stances,  under  the  circumstances  which,  instead  of  abolishing 
most  emphatically  drew  forth  the  sexual  distinctions,  viz.,  in  the 
comic  aspects  of  social  intercourse,  the  reason  that  we  see  no 
women  on  the  Greek  stage;  the  Greek  Comedy,  unless  when  it 
•£fects  the  extravagant  fun  of  farce,  rejects  women. 

NoTB  24.  Page  81. 
It  may  be  thought,  however,  by  some  readers,  that  iBschylus, 
in  his  fine  phantom  of  Darius,  has  approached  the  English  ghost 
As  a  foreign  ghost  we  would  vrish  (and  we  are  sure  that  our  ex- 
cellent readers  would  wish)  to  show  every  courtesy  and  attention 
to  this  apparition  of  Darius.  It  has  the  advantage  of  being  royal, 
an  advantage  which  it  shares  with  the  ghost  of  the  royal  Dane. 
Vet  how  different,  how  removed  by  a  total  world,  from  that  cr 
any  of  Shakspeare's  ghosts  !  Take  that  of  Banquo,  for  instance, 
low  shadowy,  how  unreal,  yet  how  real !  Darius  is  a  mere  state 
f host  —  a  diplomatic  ghost.  But  Banquo  —  he  exists  only  fof 
ICacbeth;  the  guests  do  art  see  bin,  yet  how  solemn,  how  real 
ftow  heart-searching  he  is. 


1^2  HOTU. 

Note  25.  Page  82. 
Caliban  has  not  yet  been  thoroughly  fathomed.  For  all  Shab 
rpeare's  great  creations  are  like  works  of  nature,  subjects  of  iner 
haustible  study.  It  was  this  character  of  whom  Charles  I.  and 
some  of  his  ministers  expressed  such  fervent  admiration;  and, 
among  other  circumstances,  most  justly  they  admired  the  new 
language  almost  with  which  he  is  endowed,  for  the  purpose  of 
expressing  his  fiendish  and  yet  carnal  thoughts  of  hatred  to  his 
master.  Caliban  is  evidently  not  meant  for  scorn,  but  for  abom- 
ination mixed  with  fear  and  partial  respect.  He  is  purposely 
brought  into  contrast  with  the  drunken  Trinculo  and  Stephano, 
with  an  advantageous  result.  He  is  much  more  intellectual  than 
either,  uses  a  more  elevated  language,  not  disfigured  by  vulgar 
isms,  and  is  not  liable  to  the  low  passion  for  plunder  as  they  are. 
He  is  mortal,  doubtless,  as  his  '  dam  '  (for  Shakspeare  will  not 
call  her  mother)  Sycorax.  But  he  inherits  from  her  such  quali- 
ties of  powe'"  as  a  witch  could  be  supposed  to  bequeath.  He 
trembles  indeed  before  Prospero;  but  that  is,  as  we  are  to  under- 
stand ,  through  the  moral  superiority  of  Prospero  in  Christian 
wisdom ;  for  when  he  finds  himself  in  the  presence  of  dissolute 
and  unprincipled  men,  he  rises  at  once  into  the  dignity  of  intel- 
lectual power. 

Note  26.  Page  89. 

I  believe  somewhere  about  twenty-nine  years  ago :  a  date  which 
I  deduce  indirectly  from  a  casual  recollection  that  the  composition  of 
this  little  paper  synchronized  pretty  exactly  in  its  close  with  the  com- 
mencement of  the  ever-racmorable  Bristol  riots  on  occasion  of  Sir 
Charles  Wetherell's  official  visit. 


Note  27.  Page  89. 

Which  service,  however,  I  have  little  doubt,  will  by  this  time  have 
been  much  more  adequately  performed  than  I  myself  could  hope  to 
perform  it,  by  Mr.  Masson  in  his  recent  Life  of  Milton ;  founding  my 
hopes,  in  this  particular  case,  specially  upon  the  very  distinguished 
success  which  crowned  his  labors  upon  Chatterton ;  labors  the  same 


NOTES.  583 

m  kina,  but  m  degree  much  more  severe,  as  applied  to  more  slender 
materials. 

Note  28,  Page  90. 
I.  e.  since  l>r.  Johnson  gave  utterance  to  that  scoff. 

Note  29.  Page  93. 

Polemic. — The  reader  ought  to  be  aware  that  this  word,  though 
commonly  restricted  through  pure  ignorance  to  controversial  theology, 
is  not  properly  subject  to  any  such  limitation  :  what  is  hostile  is  un- 
conditionally polemic. 

Note  30.  Page  94. 

Lobsters.  —  A  cavalry  regiment  (so  called  from  their  scarlet  uniform) 
raised  and  commanded  by  Sir  Arthur  for  the  Parliament. 

Note  31.  Page  95. 

A  feat,  however,  which  our  Sir  Robert  Sale  found  it  possible  to  re- 
peat at  Jcllalabad  in  1842,  and  under  this  important  disadvantage, — 
that  our  earthquake  made  no  pretence  to  equity  or  neutrality,  but 
most  unfairly  sided  with  Akbar  Khan  and  his  Affghans ;  whereas 
Hannibal's  struck  out  right  and  left,  and  scattered  its  favors  slantin' 
dicuLarly  [to  speak  after  Cousin  Jonathan]  tlirough  both  armies. 

Note  32.  Page  97. 

Not  meaning,  however,  as  so  many  people  do,  insolently  to  gain- 
say the  verdict  of  Milton  himself,  with  whom,  for  my  own  part,  mak- 
ing the  distinctions  that  he  would  make,  I  have  always  coincided. 
The  poet  himself  is  often  the  best  critic  on  his  own  works ;  and  in 
this  case  Milton  expressed  with  some  warmth,  and  perhaps  scorn,  his 
preference  of  the  Paradise  Regained.  Doubtless  what  disgusted  him 
naturally  enough  was,  that  too  often  he  found  the  disparagers  of  the 
one  Paradise  quite  as  guiltless  of  all  real  acquaintance  with  it  as  were 
the  promurs  of  the  other.  Else  the  distribution  of  merits  is  appar- 
ently this :  in  the  later  poem  the  execution  is  more  highly  finished ; 
or,  at  least,  partially  so.    In  the  elder  and  larger  poem,  the  scenical 


•84  NOTES. 

jpportnnities  are  more  colossal  .and  more  various.  Heaven  opening 
to  eject  her  rcbellioas  children ;  the  nnvoyageablc  depths  of  ancient 
Chaos,  with  its  "  anarch  old  "  and  its  eternal  war  of  wrecks ;  these 
traversed  by  that  great  leading  angel  that  drew  after  him  the  third 
part  of  the  heavenly  host ;  earliest  paradise  dawning  upon  the  war- 
rior-angel out  of  this  far-distant  "  sea  without  shore  "  of  chaos ;  the 
dreadful  phantoms  of  sin  and  death,  prompted  by  secret  sympathy, 
and  snuffing  the  distant  scent  of  "  mortal  change  on  earth,"  chasing 
the  steps  of  their  great  progenitor  and  sultan  ;  finally,  the  heart-freez- 
ing visions,  shown  and  narrated  to  Adam,  of  human  misery,  through 
vast  successions  of  shadowy  generations ;  —  all  these  scenical  opportu- 
nities offered  in  the  Paradise  Lost  become  in  the  hands  of  the  mighty- 
artist  elements  of  undying  grandeur  not  matched  on  earth.  The 
compass  being  so  much  narrower  in  the  Paradise  Regained,  if  no  other 
reason  operated,  inevitably  the  splendors  are  sown  more  thinly.  Bat 
the  great  vision  of  the  temptation,  the  banquet  in  the  wilderness,  the 
wilderness  itself,  the  terrific  pathos  of  the  ruined  archangel's  speech, 
'Tis  true  I  am  that  spirit  unfortunate,  &c.  (the  effect  of  which,  when 
connected  with  the  stem  unpitying  answer,  is  painfully  to  shock  the 
reader),  all  these  proclaim  the  ancient  skill  and  the  ancient  power. 
And,  as  regards  the  skill  naturally  brightened  by  long  practice,  that 
succession  of  great  friezes  which  the  archangel  unrolls  in  the  pictures 
of  Athens,  Rome,  and  Parthia,  besides  their  native  and  intrinsic 
beauty,  have  an  unrivalled  beauty  of  position  through  the  reflex 
illustration  which  reciprocally  they  give  and  receive. 

NoTK  33.  Page  99, 

In  candor  I  must  add,  if  uncultured.  This  will  suggest  a  great 
addition  to  the  one  in  a  hundred  whom  I  have  supposed  capable  of 
sympathy  with  the  higher  class  of  models.  For  the  majority  of  men 
have  had  no  advantages,  no  training,  no  discipline.  How  extrava- 
gantly unjust,  therefore,  in  the  same  Benjamin  Haydon,  whom  I  have 
just  cited  as  a  witness  on  iiii/  side,  when  he  furiously  denounces  the 
mob  of  mechanics  and  day-laI)orers  in  London  rushing  carelessly  past 
the  exhibition-room  of  a  great  painting  by  himself,  and  paying  their 
sixpences  by  bushels  to  see  Tom  Thumb.  I  have  seen  Haydon's 
ignoble  and  most  unjust  complaint  echoed  by  multitudes.  But  this 
was  a  mob  of  pleasure-seekers  in  Easter-week :    poor  fellows,   wiili 


NOTKS.  585 

horny  hands,  in  quest  most  rightfully  o(  something  to  refresh  and 
ventilate  their  bodily  systems  scorched  by  the  eternal  fever  of  unrest- 
ing days  and  nights  agitated  by  care.  Anything  on  earth,  anything 
whatever  that  would  unchain  the  poor  galley-slave's  wrists  from  his 
everlasting  oar !  And  as  to  the  oil-painting,  surely  the  fields  and  the 
Easter  flowers  would  be  better  than  that.  Haydon  forgot  that  these 
poor  fellows  had  never  had  their  natural  sensibilities  called  forth  or 
educated.  Amongst  them,  after  all,  might  lurk  a  man  or  two  that, 
having  such  advantages,  would  have  eclipsed  even  Haydon.  And 
besides,  Haydon  forgot  that  his  exhibition  not  only  cost  a  shilling,  but 
would  not  allow  of  any  uproarious  jollification  such  as  most  of  us  like 
(none  more  than  Haydon)  after  a  long  confinement  to  labor. 

Note  34.   Page  105. 

It  was  bad  policy  in  logic  to  urge  at  that  time  the  intellectual  de- 
ficiencies (true  or  false)  of  the  individual  bishops,  because  this  dilem- 
ma instantly  arose:  —  These  personal  deficiencies  in  the  bishops  had, 
or  had  not,  caused  the  prevailing  ecclesiastical  grievances.  If  they 
had  not,  then  it  was  confessedly  impertinence  to  notice  them  at  all 
On  the  other  hand,  if  they  Aac?,  then  in  whatsoever  proportion  ihey 
were  responsible  for  the  alleged  grievances  connected  with  the  Church, 
in  that  proportion  they  exonerated  tlie  institution  of  Episcopacy  from 
any  share  in  producing  those  grievances.  Such  grievances  could  not 
be  chargeable  upon  the  personal  insufficiency  of  the  individual  bishop, 
and  yet  at  the  same  time  separately  chargeable  upon  the  original  vice 
of  Episcopacy. 

Note  35.     Page  105. 

"Mary  Powel."  —  We  have  seen  in  the  hands  of  young  ladies  a 
romance  bearing  this  title,  which  (whether  meant  or  not  to  injure 
Milton)  must  do  so  if  applied  to  the  real  facts  of  the  case.  Novels 
professedly  historical  may,  in  some  rare  instances,  have  illuminated 
and  vivified  history ;  much  oftener  they  have  perplexed  it ;  and  like 
the  famous  Recess  of  Miss  Sophia  Lee,  some  seventy  years  back 
starting  from  the  basis  of  a  marriage  between  our  English  Duke  of 
Norfolk  and  the  Scottish  Queeu  Mary,  have  utterly  falsified  both  the 
(acts  and  the  traditions  of  the  case.     But  when  applied  to  the  facts 


586  NDTKs. 

or  the  traditions  of  biography,  such  romantic  fictions  have  a  far  more 
calumnious  tendency.  Every  step  which  is  made  towards  the  white- 
washing of  the  frivolous  and  unprincipled  Mary  Powel  is  a  step 
towards  the  impeachment  of  Milton ;  and  impeachment  in  a  case 
which,  if  any  within  the  records  of  human  experience,  drew  forth  and 
emblazoned  Milton's  benign  spirit  of  forgiveness,  and  his  magnani- 
mous forbearance  when  a  triumph  was  oflfered  at  once  to  his  partisan- 
ship as  a  politician,  and  to  his  insulted  rights  as  a  husband.  Look 
back,  reader,  for  a  few  lines,  and  fix  your  attention  upon  the  particu- 
lar date  of  Milton's  marriage.  There  is  something  very  significant 
and  important  in  tliat.  It  was  celebrated,  as  you  see,  at  Whitsuntide 
in  the  year  1645.  Now,  as  Whitsuntide  is  a  movable  festival,  and 
dependent  upon  Easter,  it  is  difiicult  to  guess  on  what  day  it  would 
fall  in  that  year.  But  at  the  very  earliest,  Whitsuntide  would  fall  in 
May,  and  at  the  latest,  within  the  month  of  June.  Now  in  that  very 
June  was  fought  and  won  by  the  Parliament  forces  under  Fairfax  the 
decisive  battle  of  Naseby  in  Northamptonshire.  That  battle  pros- 
trated the  party  to  which  the  Powels  belonged,  and  raised  to  the 
supreme  administration  of  public  affairs  the  party  of  Milton,  and 
eventually  Milton  himself.  It  is  true  that  a  lingering  resistance  to 
the  Parliament  was  kept  up  in  garrisoned  and  fortified  towns  through- 
out the  nine  months  succeeding  to  Naseby.  But  about  Lady-day 
(March  25)  of  the  following  year,  1646,  the  very  last  act  of  hostility 
took  place,  viz.  an  extensive  cavalry  action  at  Stow-in-the-WoIds,  a 
town  of  Gloucestershire.  Sir  Jacob  Astley,  who  commanded  for  the 
king,  was  totally  defeated ;  and  the  prostration  of  the  Royalists  wa« 
on  that  day  finally  sealed.  Now  it  was  some  months  after  Naseby 
that  Milton,  without  reserve,  forgave  his  erring  wife,  and  reinstated 
her  at  the  head  of  his  family.  Some  private  calamity  must  have  con- 
curred about  this  time  with  their  political  overthrow  to  overwhelm 
the  Powels.  For  a  season  they  were  ruined.  But  Milton,  forgetting 
all  injuries,  received  the  entire  family  into  his  own  house.  So  much 
for  the  real  historic  Mary  Powel  as  compared  with  the  Mary  Powel 
of  romance. 

Note  36.     Page  116. 

This  closing  paragraph  must  (from  internal  evidence)  have  been 
added  at  the  press,  I  presume  in  or  about  the  year  1830  or  1831, 


NOTKS.  587 

wlien  the  little  sketch  was  written  and  probably  printed.  I  Iiave  no 
wisli  or  design  to  charge  the  unknown  writer  with  any  intentional  falsi- 
fication of  my  very  determinate  opinions  upon  the  chief  biographers 
of  Milton.  Bishop  Newton  and  Archdeacon  Todd  I  believe  to  have 
been  honest  men,  but  brought  unavoidably  into  positions  trying  to 
that  honesty,  and  even  into  inextricable  perplexities,  by  the  collision 
between  two  most  solemn  obligations,  —  viz.  on  the  one  hand  loyalty  to 
the  Church  of  England,  and  on  the  other  hand  loyalty  to  the  mighty 
poet  whose  intellectual  interests  they  had  spontaneously  engaged  to 
sustain,  though  well  knowing  that  this  great  man  had  ranked  as  the 
most  undistinguishing,  fierce,  and  sometimes  even  malicious  (though 
still  conscientious)  assailant  that  ever  tilted  against  the  splendid 
Anglican  Establishment.  Dutiful  sons  (being  at  the  same  time  bene- 
ficed servants)  of  that  Establishment,  could  not  effectually  mediate 
between  interests  so  radically  opposed.  Would  it  indeed  be  fair  to 
expect  from  one  who  had  simply  promised  us  a  biographic  sketch  of 
an  individual,  that  amongst  the  mere  collateral  issues  emerging  as 
questions  incidentally  connected  with  his  theme,  he  should,  for  in- 
stance, exhaust  the  great  problem  of  Church  Government? — whether 
best  administered  by  Prelates  arrayed  in  purple  and  gold,  or  by 
obscure  and  dust-begrimed  Elders,  or  (in  defiance  of  all  alien  author- 
ity) administered  Independently,  — i.  e.  by  each  congregation  separately 
for  itself,  —  in  which  case  each  congregation  is  a  perfect  church  hang- 
ing by  its  own  hook,  and  owning  no  debt,  great  or  small,  to  any 
brother  congregation,  except  only  that  of  an  exemplary  kicking  in 
case  such  brother  should  presume  to  interfere  with  advice  not  asked  for, 
or  with  impertinent  suggestion.  Newton  and  Todd  extricated  them- 
selves with  decency  from  a  difficulty  which  it  was  impossible  to  face 
with  absolute  success  ;  and  the  main  impression  left  uj)on  my  mind 
to  their  disadvantage  is,  that  their  materials  were  chaotic,  difficult 
to  organize  without  the  powers  of  a  demiurgus,  and  accordingly  not 
organized.  As  to  Symmons,  he  was  a  Whig ;  and  his  covert  pur- 
pose was  to  secure  Milton  for  his  own  party,  before  that  party  was 
fully  secreted  by  the  new  tendencies  beginning  to  move  amongst  the 
partisanships  of  the  age.  Until  Dr.  Sacheverel  came,  in  Queen  Anne's 
reign,  the  crystallizations  of  Wlilg  and  Tory  were  rudimental  and 
Incomplete.  Symmons,  therefore,  was  under  a  bias  and  a  morbid 
kind  of  deflexion.  He  was,  besides,  tumultuary  and  precipitate  in  his 
modes  of  composition.    Finally,  as  regards  Dr.  Johnson,  am  I  the 


688  NOTES. 

man  that  would  suffer  him  to  escape  under  the  trivial  impeach- 
ment of  "  prejudice  "  ?  Dr.  Johnson,  viewed  in  relation  to 
Milton,  was  a  malicious,  mendacious,  and  dishonest  man.  He 
was  met  by  temptations  many  and  strong  to  falsehood ;  and 
these  temptations  he  had  not  the  virtue  to  resist. 

Note  37.    Page  118. 

The  short  paper  entitled  "  Milton  "  defends  that  mighty  poet 
upon  two  separate  impeachments — applying  themselves  (as  the 
reader  will  please  to  recollect)  not  to  scattered  sentences  occur- 
ring here  and  there,  but  to  the  whole  texture  of  the  "  Paradise 
Lost,"  and  also  of  the  "  Paradise  Regained."  One  of  these  im- 
peachments is  —  that  the  poet,  incongruously  as  regarded  laste, 
but  also  injuriously,  or  almost  profanely,  as  regarded  the  pieties 
of  his  theme,  introduces  the  mythologies  of  Paganism  amongst 
the  saintly  hierarchies  of  Revelation  ;  takes  away,  in  short,  the 
barrier  of  separation  between  the  impure  mobs  of  the  Pantheon 
and  the  holy  armies  of  the  Christian  heavens.  The  other  im- 
peachment applies  to  Milton's  introduction  of  thoughts,  or  im- 
ages, or  facts,  connected  with  human  art,  and  suggesting,  how- 
ever evanescently,  the  presence  of  man  cooperating  with  man, 
and  the  tumult  of  social  multitudes,  amidst  the  primeval  silence 
of  Paradise  ;  or  again  (as  in  the  "  Paradise  Regained  ")  amidst 
the  more  fearful  solitudes  of  the  Arabian  wilderness.  These 
charges  were  first  of  all  urged  by  Addison,  but  more  than  half 
a  century  afterwards  were  indorsed  by  Dr.  Johnson.  Addison 
was  the  inaugural  critic  on  Milton,  coming  forward  in  the  early 
part  of  the  eighteenth  century  (viz.,  in  the  opening  months  of 
1712,  when  as  yet  Milton  had  not  been  dead  for  so  much  as  forty 
years) ;  but  Dr.  Johnson,  who  followed  him  at  a  distance  of 
more  than  sixty  years,  in  the  same  century,  told  upon  his  own 
generation,  and  generally  upon  the  English  literature,  as  a 
critic  of  more  weiuht  and  power.  It  is  certain,  however,  that 
Addison,  by  his  very  deficiencies,  by  his  feebleness  of  grasp,  and 
his  immaturity  of  development  in  most  walks  of  critical  re- 
search, did  a  service  to  Milton  incomparably  greater  than  all 
other  critics  collectively  —  were  it  only  by  its  seasonableness  ; 
for  it  came  at  the  very  vestibule  of  Milton's  career  as  a  poet 
militant  amongst  his  countrymen,  who  had  his  popular  accepta- 
tion yet  to  win,  after  the  eighteenth  century  had  commenced. 
Just  at  this  critical  moment  it  was  that  Addison  stepped  in  to 


NOTES.  589 

^e  the  initial  bias  tu  the  national  mind  —  that  bins  which  in 
tercepted  any  other.*   So  far,  and  perhaps  secretly  throagh  some 

♦  "Intercepted  any  other:"  —  What  other?  the  reader  will 
ask.  In  writing  the  words,  I  meant  no  more  than,  generally, 
that  a  very  favorable  bias,  once  established,  would  limit  the 
openings  for  alienated  or  hos.ile  feelings.  But  of  such  feelings, 
on  second  thoughts,  it  was  obvious  that  one  mode  there  was  spe- 
cially threatening  to  Milton's  cordial  and  household  welcome 
through  Great  Britain  —  that  mode  which  secretly  at  all  times, 
often  avowedly,  governed  Dr.  Johnson  —  viz.,  the  permanent 
feud  with  Milton  through  his  political  party.  But  the  feud 
took  often  a  more  embittered  shape  than  that.  Milton's  party- 
was  republican.  But  Milton  individually  had  a  worse  quarrel 
to  settle  than  this.  All  republicans  were  not  regicides ;  and 
Milton  vcas.  Virtually  he  was  regarded  by  numbers  as  a  regi- 
cide, and  even  under  a  rancorous  aggravation  ;  one  who  evaded 
by  a  verbal  refiupmeiit  the  penalties  of  any  statutable  offence 
connected  with  the  king's  death,  whilst  he  exhibited  a  malice 
directed  against  the  king's  person  more  settled  and  inexorable 
than  any  other  man  throughout  the  three  nations.  It  is  true  he 
had  not  sat  in  judgment  on  the  king ;  he  had  not  signed  the 
warrant  for  his  execution.  Not  through  any  scruples,  legal  or 
otherwise  ;  but  simply  as  not  summoned,  by  any  official  station, 
to  such  a  step.  He  had  therefore  given  no  antecedent  sanction 
to  the  king's  judicial  treatment  in  Westminster  Hall,  or  on  the 
Bcaifold.  But,  extrajudicially,  and  subseqnentli/,  he  had  gone  fur 
ther  in  acrimonious  invectives  against  the  king,  and  in  sharpen- 
ing the  offences  charged  upon  him,  than  any  man  who  stood 
forward  prominently  at  the  time.  Very  few  went  the  length  of 
Milton.  Besides  his  vindication  of  the  king's  punishment,  he 
had  deeply  and  specially  offended  a  great  multitude  of  the  royal 
partisans  by  his  Eiconoklastes  (image-breaker,  or  idol-breaker) ; 
breaker  of  what  image  ?  Of  the  Eiccn  Basilike  —  i.  e.,  the  royal 
image,  which  professed  to  publish  the  king's  private  memoranda 
ind  religious  reflections  upon  the  chief  incidents  of  the  war. 
Had  the  king  really  written  or  dictated  such  a  work  ?  Thai 
loestion  remains  wrapped  ap  in  mystery  to  this  day.    But  Mil 


590  N3TF.8. 

Other  mo4es  of  aid,  Addisoii  had  proved  (as  I  have  called  hi»u) 
the  most  seasonable  of  allies :  but  this  critic  possessed  also  an 
other  commanding  gift  towards  the  winning  of  popularity 
whether  for  himself  or  for  those  he  patronized  —  in  his  style,  Id 
the  quality  of  his  thoughts,  and  in  iiis  facility  of  explaining 
them  luminously  and  with  natural  grace. 

Dr.  Johnson,  without  any  distinct  acknowledgment  adopted 
both  these  charges  from  Addison.      But   it  is  singular  that, 

ton,  aware  of  the  doubts  as  to  the  authentic  authorship  of  the 
little  book,  had  so  managed  his  Eiconoklast  as  to  meet  either 
hypothesis  —  viz.,  that  Charles  was,  or  that  he  was  not,  the  ati- 
thor.  The  wrath,  therefore,  of  those  who  worshipped  the  Eicoti, 
as  exhibiting  the  king  in  a  character  of  saintly  and  forgiv- 
ing charity,  pa.ssed  all  bounds  towards  the  man  who  had  rudely 
unmasked  the  forgery,  if  it  were  a  forgery,  or  unmasked  the 
pretender  to  a  charity  which  he  counterfeited  —  if  really  the 
king. 

Let  me  add,  at  the  conclusion  of  this  note,  that,  considering 
how  many  public  men  of  the  republican  party  were  at  that  time 
assassinated,  it  remains  a  great  mystery  how  it  happened  that 
Milton  died  in  his  bed.  This  was  a  great  distinction,  and  (one 
wonld  hope)- conceded  to  his  sublime  intellectual  claims,  though 
as  yet  imperfectly  established.  But,  a  very  few  years  after  his 
death,  a  more  conspicuous  distinction  was  made  in  his  favor. 
In  the  meridian  heat  of  the  Kevoliition,  poor  old  General  Lud- 
low (an  honest  man,  if  any  there  was  in  those  frenzied  days) 
ventured  from  his  Alpine  asylum  into  the  ])ublicity  of  London, 
but  was  sternly  (some  think  brutally)  ordered  off  by  Parlia- 
ment, as  a  mode  of  advertising  their  discountenance  to  regicide. 
No  other  questionable  act  was  imputed  to  the  gallant  old  com» 
mander  of  Cromwell's  cavalry.  He  had  cooperated  too  ardently 
In  promoting  the  king  to  martyrdom.  At  that  very  time,  the 
Whigs,  to  their  great  honor — especisUly  two  of  their  most  dis- 
tinguished men,  Somers  and  Addison  —  were  patronizing  by  a 
fervent  subscription  a  splendid  edition  of  Miltou,  who  oatrac 
Ludlow  as  much  in  his  regicidal  zeal,  as  he  did  in  the  grandeui 
of  his  intellect. 


NOTXS.  591 

irhilst  Addison,  who  does  himself  s^reat  honor  by  the  reveren- 
tial tenderness  which  everywhere  he  shows  to  Milton,  has  urged 
these  supposed  reproaches  with  some  am{)litude  of  expression 
.and  illustration.  Dr.  Johnson,  on  the  other  hand  —  whose  ma- 
lignity towards  Milton  is  unrelenting,  on  account  of  his  repub- 
lican and  regicide  politics  —  dismisses  both  these  reproaches 
with  apparent  carelessness  and  haste.*  What  he  says  in  refer 
ence  to  the  grouping  of  Pagan  with  Christian  imagery  or  im- 
personations is  simply  this :  "  The  mythologic  allusions  have 
been  justly  censured,  as  not  being  always  used  with  notice  of 
their  vanity."  The  word  vanity  is  here  used  in  an  old  world 
Puritanical  sense  for  falsehood  or  visionariness.  In  what  relap 
tions  the  Pagan  gods  may  be  pronounced  false,  would  allow  of 
a  far  profounder  inquiry  than  is  suspected  by  the  wording  of 
the  passage  quoted.  It  is,  besides,  to  be  observed,  that,  even  i£ 
undoubtedly  and  confessedly  false,  any  creed  which  has  for  ages 
been  the  object  of  a  cordial  assent  from  an  entire  race,  or  from 
many  nations  of  men,  or  a  belief  which  (like  the  belief  in  ghostly 
apparitions)  rests  upon  eternal  predispositions  and  nattiral  ten- 
dencies in  man  as  a  being  surrounded  by  mysteries,  is  entitled 
by  an  irresistible  claim  to  a  secondary  faith  from  those  even 
who  reject  it ;  and  to  a  respect,  such  as  could  not  be  demanded, 
for  example,  on  behalf  of  any  capricious  fiction  like  that  of  the 
Rosicrucian  sylphs  and  gnomes  —  invented  in  a  known  year, 
and  by  an  assignable  man. 

None  of  us,  at  this  day,  who  live  in  continual  communication 
with  cities,  have  any  lingering  faith  in  the  race  of  fairies ;  but 
yet,  as  a  class  of  beings  consecrated  by  immemorial  traditions, 
and  dedicated  to  the  wild  solitudes  of  nature,  and  to  the  shad- 
owy illumination  of  moonlight,  we  grant  them  a  toleration  ol 


*  An  angry  notice  of  the  equivocation  in  "  Lycidas  "  between 
ChrLstian  teachers,  figuratively  described  as  shepherds,  and  the 
actual  shepherds  of  rural  economy,  recalls  to  the  reader  (as  do 
«o  many  other  explosions  of  the  doctor's  temper)  a  veritable 
Malachi  Malagrowther :  he  calls  it  indecent.  But  there  is  no 
ftllosion  to  the  faulty  intermingling  of  Pagan  with  Christiav 
(roapi. 


iim  faith  and  old  ancestral  love  —  aa,  for  instance,  in  the  "  Mid> 
Slimmer  Night's  Dream"  —  very  much  as  we  might  suppose 
granted  to  some  decaying  superstition  that  was  protected  lov- 
ingly by  the  children  of  man's  race,  against  the  too  severe  and 
eiconoklastic  vrisdom  of  their  parents. 

The  other  charge  of  obtruding  upon  the  reader  an  excess  of 
scientific  allusions,  or  of  knowledge  harshly  technical,  Dr.  John- 
son notices  even  still  more  slightly  in  this  very  negligent  sen- 
tence :  "  His  unnecessary  and  ungraceful  use  of  terms  of  art 
it  is  not  necessary  to  mention  ;  because  they  are  easily  remarked, 
and  generally  censured."  Unaccountably  Dr.  Johnson  forbears 
to  press  this  accusation  against  Milton.  But  generally,  even  iu 
the  forbearances  or  uidulgent  praises  of  Dr.  Johnson,  we  stum- 
ble on  the  hoof  of  a  Malagrowther ;  whilst,  on  the  contrary, 
ihe  direct  censures  of  Addison  are  so  managed  as  to  furnish  oc- 
cajsions  of  oblique  homage.  There  is  a  remarkaoie  instance  of 
this  in  the  very  mechanism  and  arrangement  of  his  long  essay 
on  the  "  Paradise  Lost."  In  No.  297  of  the  "  Spectator,"  he 
enters  upon  that  least  agreeable  section  of  this  essay,  which  is 
occupied  with  passing  in  review  the  chief  blemishes  of  this  great 
poem.  But  Addison  shrank  with  so  much  honorable  pain  from 
this  unwelcome  office,  that  he  would  not  undertake  it  at  all,  un- 
til he  had  premised  a  distinct  paper  (No.  291)  one  whole  week 
beforehand,  for  the  purpose  of  propitiating  the  most  idolatrous 
reader  of  Milton,  by  showing  that  he  sought  rather  to  take  this 
office  of  fault-finding  out  of  hands  that  might  prove  less  trust- 
worthy, than  to  court  any  gratification  to  his  own  vanity  in  a 
momentary  triumph  over  so  great  a  man.  After  this  concilia- 
tory preparation,  no  man  can  complain  of  Addison's  censures, 
even  when  groundless. 

With  mo.st  of  these  censnres,  whether  well  or  ill  founded,  I 
do  not  here  concern  myself.  The  two  with  which  I  Jo,  ana 
which  seem  to  me  unconsciously  directed  against  modes  of  sen 
gibilitj  in  Milton  not  fathomed  by  the  critic,  nor  lying  within 
ieptlis  ever  likely  to  be  fathomed  by  his  plummet,  I  will  report 
in  Addison's  o^vn  words:  "Another  blemish,  that  appears  in 
■ome  of  his  thoughts,  is  his  frequent  allusion  to  heathen  fables  , 
irhich  are  not  certainly  of  a  piece  with  the  divine  subject  ol 
vhich  he  treats.     I  do  not  find  fault  with  these  allusions,  where 


NOTES.  593 

he  poet  himself  represents  them  as  i<ibnlou9,  as  he  does  in  some 
places,  but  where  he  mentions  them  as  truths  and  matters  of 
fact.  A  third  fault  in  his  sentiments  is  an  unnecessary  ostenta- 
tion of  learaing  ;  which  likewise  occurs  very  frequently.  It  is 
certain  "  (indeed  !)  "  that  both  Homer  and  Virgil  were  roasters 
of  all  the  learning  of  their  time:  but  it  shows  itself  in  their 
works  after  an  indirect  and  concealed  manner."  Certainly  after 
a  very  concealed  manner ;  so  concealed  that  no  man  has  been  :ible 
to  find  it. 

These  two  charges  against  Milton  being  lodged,  and  entered 
upon  the  way-bill  of  the  "  Paradise  Lost "  in  its  journey  down 
to  posterity,  Addi.son  makes  a  final  censure  on  the  poem  in  ref- 
erence to  its  diction.  Fortunately  upon  such  a  question  it  may 
be  possible  hereafter  to  obtain  a  revision  of  this  sentence,  gov- 
erned by  canons  less  arbitrary  than  the  feelings,  or  perhaps  the 
transient  caprices,  of  individuals.  Eor  the  present  I  should 
have  nothing  to  do  with  this  question  upon  the  Miltonic  diction, 
were  it  not  that  Addison  has  thought  fit  to  subdivide  this  last 
fault  in  the  "  Paradise  Lost  "  (as  he  considers  it)  into  three  sep- 
arate modes.  Tlie  first*  and  the  second  do  not  concern  my 
present  purpose  :  but  the  third  does.  "  This  lies,"  says  Addison, 
"  in  the  frequent  use  of  what  the  learned  call  technical  words,  or 
terms  of  art."  And  amongst  other  illustrations,  he  says  that 
Milton,  "wlien  he  is  upon  buildinj:,  mentions  Doric  pillars,  pi- 
lasters, cornice,  frieze,  architrave."  This  in  effect  is  little  more 
than  a  varied  expression  for  tlie  second  of  those  two  objection* 
to  the  "  Paradise  Lost  "  which  Addison  originated,  and  Dr.  John- 
ion  adopted  lo  tlitse  it  !.«.,  and  these  only,  that  my  little 
paper  replies 

*  It  is  a  singular  weakness  in  Addison,  that,  having  assigned 
this  first  feature  of  Milton's  dietion  —  viz.,  its  supposed  depends 
ence  on  exotic  words  and  on  exotic  idioms  —  as  the  main  cause 
of  his  failure,  he  then  makes  it  the  main  cause  of  his  saccesa, 
lince  without  such  words  and  idioms  Milton  could  net  (he  sa^i) 
hare  sustained  his  characteristic  ><ublimity 
M 


594 


NoTi38.  Page  178. 
'Arc  :  * — Modern  France,  that  should  know  a  great  deal  bet- 
ter than  myself,  insists  that  the  name  is  not  D'Aro  —  i.  e.,  of 
Arc  —  but  Dare.  Now  it  happens  sometimes,  that  if  a  person, 
whose  position  guarantees  his  access  to  the  best  information,  will 
content  himself  with  gloomy  dogmatism,  striking  the  table  with 
his  fist,  and  saying  in  a  terrific  voice,  'It  is  so ;  and  there's  an 
end  of  it,'  oue  bows  deferentially,  and  submits.  But  if,  unhap 
pily  for  himself,  won  by  this  docility,  he  relents  too  amiably  int« 
reasons  and  arguments,  probably  one  raises  an  insurrection 
against  him  that  may  never  be  crushed;  for  in  the  fields  of  logic 
one  can  skirmish,  perhaps,  as  well  as  he.  Had  he  confined  him- 
self  to  dogmatism,  he  would  have  entrenched  his  position  in 
darkness,  and  have  hidden  his  own  vulnerable  points.  But, 
coming  down  to  base  reasons,  he  lets  in  light,  and  one  sees  whor* 
to  plant  the  blows.  Now,  the  worshipful  reason  of  modern  Franct 
for  disturbing  the  old  received  spelling,  is  —  that  Jean  Hordal, 
a  descendant  of  La  Pucelle's  brother,  spelled  the  name  Darcy  \z 
2612.  But  what  of  that  ?  It  is  notorious  that  what  small  mat- 
ter of  spelling  Providence  had  thought  fit  to  disburse  amongst 
man  in  the  seventeenth  century,  was  all  monopolized  by  printers; 
oow,  M.  Hordal  was  not  a  printer. 

Nora  39.   Page  179. 
'  Those  that  share  thy  blood : '  —  a  collateral  relative  of  Joanna's 
was  Bubsoquently  ennobled  by  the  title  of  Du  Lys. 

Note  40.  Page  182. 
•Only   now  forthcoming:' — In  1847  began  the  publication 
(from  official  records)  of  Joanna's  trial.     It  was  interrupted,  1 
ftv,  by  the  convulsions  of  1848;  and  whether  even  yet  finished 
I  do  not  know. 

Note  41.  Page  184. 
^Jean:'—  M.  Michelet  asserts,  that  there  was  a  mystwfc 
meaning  at  that  era  in  calling  a  child  Jean  ;  it  implied  a  secrel 
»ommendation  of  a  child,  if  not  a  dedication,  to  St.  John  th« 
ivangelist,  the  beloved  disciple,  the  apostle  of  love  and  mysterioai 
visions.     But,  really,  as  the  name  was  so  exceedingly  common. 


HOTEB.  595 

fcw  people  will  detect  a  mystery  in  calling  a  boy  l)y  tlie  name  of 
J*ck,  though  it  does  seem  mysterious  to  call  a  girl  Jack.  It  maj 
l«  less  80  in  France,  where  a  beautiful  practice  has  always  pre* 
Tailed  of  pving  to  a  boy  his  mother's  name  —  preceded  and 
Btrengthened  by  a  male  name,  as  Charles  Anne,  Victor  Vic- 
toire.  In  cases  where  a  mother's  memory  has  been  unusuallj 
dear  to  a  son,  this  vocal  memento  of  her,  locked  into  the  circlt 
of  his  own  name,  gives  to  it  the  tenderness  of  a  testamentary 
relique,  or  a  funeral  ring.  I  presume,  therefore,  that  La  fucelle 
must  have  borne  the  baptismal  names  of  Jeanne  Jean ;  the  latter 
vith  no  reference,  perhaps,  to  so  sublime  a  person  as  St.  John, 
but  simply  to  some  relative. 

Note  42.  Page  185. 
And  reminding  one  of  that  inscription,  so  justly  admired  by 
Paul  Richter,  which  a  Russian  Czarina  placed  on  a  guide-po«* 
near  Moscow  —  T%i<  U  the  road  that  leads  to  Constantinople. 

Note  43.   Page  209. 

Amongst  the  many  ebullitions  of  M.  Michelet's  fury  against  xm 
poor  English,  are  four  which  will  be  likely  to  amuse  the  reader  ; 
and  they  are  the  more  conspicuous  in  collision  with  the  justice 
which  he  sometimes  does  us,  and  the  very  indignant  admiration 
which,  under  some  aspects,  he  grants  to  us. 

1.  Our  English  literature  he  admires  with  some  gnashing  n{ 
teeth.  He  pronounces  it '  fine  and  sombre,'  but,  I  lament  to  add, 
'  sceptical.  Judaic,  Satanic — in  a  word,  Anti-Christian.'  That 
Lord  Byron  should  figure  as  a  member  of  this  diabolical  corponw 
tion,  will  not  surprise  men.  It  will  surprise  them  to  hear  that 
Hilton  is  one  of  its  Satanic  leaders.  Many  are  the  generous  and 
eloquent  Frenchmen,  besides  Chateaubriand,  who  have,  in  the 
course  of  the  last  thirty  years,  nobly  suspended  their  own  bunv 
ing  nationality,  in  order  to  render  a  more  rapturous  homage  at 
the  feet  of  Milton;  and  some  of  them  have  raised  Milton  almoel 
to  a  level  with  angelic  natures  Not  one  of  them  has  thought  of 
looking  for  him  below  the  earth.  As  to  Shakspearc,  M.  Michelet 
Jetects  in  him  a  most  extraordinary  mare's  nest.  It  is  this :  he 
i'>es  '  not  recollect  to  have  seen  the  name  of  God  '  in  any  part  of 
tis  works      On  reading  such  words,  \t  is  natural  to  rub  one'i 


500  KOXES. 

I'jes,  and  suspect  that  all  one  has  ever  seeu  in  this  world  may 
have  been  a  pure  ocular  delusion.  In  particular,  I  begin  myself 
to  suspect,  that  the  word  •  la  gloire  '  never  occurs  in  any  Pari- 
eian  journal.  •  The  great  English  nation,'  says  M.  Michelet,  '  haa 
one  iiniDense  profound  vice,'  to  wit,  •  pride.'  Why,  really  that 
may  be  true;  but  we  have  a  neighbor  not  absolutely  cle  .r  of  an 
'  immense  profound  vice,'  as  like  ours  in  color  and  shape  as  cherry 
to  cherry.  lu  short,  M.  Michelet  thinks  us,  by  fits  and  startf 
•dmirable,  only  that  we  are  detestable;  and  he  would  adore  somf 
of  our  authors,  were  it  not  that  so  intensely  he  could  have  wished 
to  kick  them. 

2  M.  Michelet  thinks  to  lodge  an  arrow  in  our  sides  by  a  very 
odd  remark  upon  Thomas  a  Kempis :  which  is,  that  a  man  of  any 
eonceivable  European  blood  —  a  Finlander,  suppose,  or  a  Zan- 
tiote  —  might  have  written  Tom  ;  only  not  an  Englishman. 
Whether  an  Englishman  could  have  forged  Tom,  must  remain  a 
matter  of  doubt,  unless  the  thing  had  been  tried  long  ago.  That 
problem  was  intercepted  for  ever  by  Tom's  perverseness  in  choos- 
aig  to  manufacture  himself.  Yet,  since  nobody  is  better  aware 
than  M.  Michelet  that  this  very  point  of  Kempis  having  manu- 
factured Kempis  is  furiously  and  hopelessly  litigated,  three  or 
four  nations  claiming  to  have  forged  his  work  for  him,  the 
shocking  old  doubt  will  raise  its  snaky  head  once  more  —  whether 
this  forger,  who  rests  in  so  much  darkness,  might  not,  after  all, 
be  of  English  blood.  Tom,  it  may  be  feared,  is  known  to  modern 
English  literature  chiefly  by  an  irreverent  mention  of  his  name 
In  a  line  of  Peter  Pindar's  (Dr.  Wolcot)  fifty  years  back,  where 
be  is  described  as 

•  Kempis  Tom, 
Who  clearly  shows  the  way  to  Kingdom  Come.' 
Pew  in  these  days  can  have  read  him,  unless  in  the  Methodist 
version  of  John  Wesley.  Amongst  those  few,  however,  happens 
10  be  myself;  which  arose  fi-om  the  accident  of  having,  when  a 
boy  of  eleven,  received  a  copy  of  the  '  De  Imitatione  Christi,'  aa 
a  bequest  from  a  relation,  who  died  very  youug;  from  which 
cause,  and  from  the  external  prettiness  of  the  book,  being  a 
Glasgow  reprint,  by  the  celebrated  Foulis,  and  gayly  bound,  1 
va&  induced  to  look  into  it;  and  finally  read  it  many  times  over 
partly  out  of  some  sympathy  which,  even  in  those  days,  I  hml 


NOTES.  507 

with  its  simplicity  and  devotional  fervor;  but  much  more  from 
Ihe  savage  delight  1  found  in  laughing  at  Tom's  Latinity.  That, 
I  freely  grant  to  M.  Michelet,  is  inimitable.  Yet,  after  all,  it  i« 
not  certain  whether  the  original  was  Latin.  But,  however  that 
may  have  been,  if  it  is  possible  that  M.  Michelet  *  can  be  accu- 
rate in  saying  that  there  are  no  less  than  sixty  French  versioM 
(not  editions,  observe,  but  separate  versions)  existing  of  the  '  D« 
Imitaticne,'  how  prodigious  must  have  been  the  adaptation  of  the 
book  to  the  religious  heart  of  the  fifteenth  century  !  Excepting 
the  Bible,  but  excepting  that  only,  in  Protestant  lands,  no  book 
known  to  man  has  had  the  same  distinction.  It  is  the  moat 
marvellous  bibliographical  fact  on  record. 

3.  Our  English  girls,  it  seems,  are  as  faulty  in  one  way  as  m 
English  males  in  another.  None  of  us  men  could  have  written 
the  Opera  Omnia  of  Mr.  h  Kempis;  neither  could  any  of  our 
girls  have  assumed  male  attire  like  La  Pucelle.  But  why? 
Because,  says  Michelet,  English  girls  and  German  think  so  much 
ti  an  indecorum.  Well,  that  is  a  good  fault,  generally  speaking 
But  M.  Michelet  ought  to  have  remembered  a  fact  in  the  martyr- 
ologies  which  justifies  both  parties  —  the  French  heroine  for 
doing,  and  the  general  choir  of  English  girls  for  not  doing.  A 
female  saint,  specially  renowned  in  France,  had,  for  a  reason  as 
weighty  as  Joanna's  —  viz.,  expressly  to  shield  her  modesty 
amongst  men  —  worn  a  male  military  harness.     That  reason  and 

*  *  1/  M.  Michelet  can  be  accurate  : ' —  However,  on  consider* 
ation,  this  statement  does  not  depend  on  Michelet.  The  bibli* 
ographer  Barbier  has  absolutely  specijied  sixty  in  a  separate 
dissertation,  soixante  traductions,  amongst  those  even  that  hav« 
not  escaped  the  search.  The  Italian  translations  are  said  to  b« 
thirty.  As  to  mere  editions,  not  counting  the  early  MSS.  for 
half  a  century  before  printing  was  introduced,  those  in  Latin 
nmount  to  two  thousand,  and  those  in  French  to  one  thousand. 
Meantime,  it  is  very  clear  to  me  that  this  astonishing  popularity, 
10  entirely  unparalleled  in  li'ierature,  could  not  have  existed  ex 
eept  in  Roman  Catholic  times,  nor  subsequently  have  lingered  in 
any  Protestant  land.  It  was  the  denial  of  Scripture  foumains  to 
thirsty  lands  which  made  tiiis  slender  rill  of  Scripture  truth  so 
Masionat^ly  welcome. 


3'J8  K0TE8. 

that  example  autliorized  La  Pucelle  ;  but  our  English  gUls,  s» 
a  body,  have  seldom  any  such  reason,  nnd  certainly  no  such 
saintly  example,  to  plead.  This  excuses  them.  Yet,  still,  if  it  ii 
indispensable  to  the  national  character  that  our  young  women 
ehould  now  and  then  trespass  over  the  frontier  of  decorum,  it  then 
becomes  a  patriotic  duty  in  me  to  assure  M.  Michelet  that  we  hav« 
such  ardent  females  amongst  us,  and  in  a  long  series  ;  soma 
detected  in  naval  hospitals,  when  too  sick  to  remember  their 
disguise;  some  on  fields  of  battle;  multitudes  never  detected  at 
all;  some  only  suspected;  and  others  discharged  without  noiae 
by  war  ofiSces  and  other  absurd  people.  In  our  navy,  both  royal 
and  commercial,  and  generally  from  deep  remembrances  of 
slighted  love,  women  have  sometimes  served  in  disguise  for  many 
years,  taking  contentedly  their  daily  allowance  of  burgoo,  biscuit, 
or  cannon-balls  —  anything,  in  short,  digestible  or  indigestible,- 
that  it  might  please  Providence  to  send.  One  thing,  at  least,  ia 
to  their  credit :  never  any  of  these  poor  masks,  with  their  deep 
silent  remembrances,  have  been  detected  through  murmuring,  cr 
what  is  nautically  understood  by  *  skulking.'  So,  for  once,  M, 
Michelet  has  an  erratum  to  enter  upon  the  fly-leaf  of  his  book  in 
presentation  copies. 

4.  But  the  last  of  these  ebullitions  is  the  most  lively.  Wt 
English,  at  Orleans,  and  after  Orleans  (which  is  not  quite  so  ex- 
traordinary, if  all  were  told),  fled  before  the  Maid  of  Arc.  Yea, 
says  M.  Michelet,  you  did :  deny  it,  if  you  can.  Deny  it,  man 
chert  I  don't  mean  to  deny  it.  Running  away,  in  many  cases, 
is  a  thing  so  excellent,  that  no  philosopher  would,  at  times,  con- 
descend to  adopt  any  other  step.  All  of  us  nations  in  Eui^pe, 
without  one  exception,  have  shovm  our  philosophy  in  that  way  at 
times.  Even  people,  •  qui  ne  se  rendent  j'os,'  have  deigned  both 
to  run  and  to  shout,  ♦  Sauve  qui  peut !  '  at  odd  times  of  sunset ; 
ihough,  for  my  part,  I  have  no  pleasure  in  recalling  unpleasant 
remembrances  to  brave  men  ;  and  yet,  really,  being  so  phi]o> 
Bophic,  they  ought  not  to  be  unpleasant.  But  the  amusing  fea- 
tme  in  M.  Michelet's  reproach  is  the  way  in  which  he  improvea 
and  varies  against  us  the  charge  of  running,  as  if  he  were  singing 
a  catch.  Listen  to  him.  They  '  showed  their  backs,^  did  thes* 
English.  (Hip,  hip,  hurrah !  three  times  three  !)  '  Behind 
good  walls,  they  let  themselves  be  taken.*     (Hip,  hip  !  nine  timer 


NO  IKS.  509 

aine !)  They  '  ran  as  fa^t  as  their  legs  could  carry  them.' 
(Hurrah  !  twenty-seven  times  twenty-seven  !)  They  '  ran  bsforf 
a  girl;'  they  did.  (Hurrah!  eighty-one  times  eighty-ono!) 
This  reminds  one  of  criminal  indictments  on  the  old  model  in 
English  courts,  where  (for  fear  the  prisoner  should  escape)  the 
crown  lawyer  varied  the  charge  perhaps  through  forty  counts. 
The  law  laid  its  guns  so  as  to  rake  the  accused  at  every  possible 
angle.  Whilst  the  indictment  was  reading,  he  seemed  a  monster 
of  crime  in  his  own  eyes;  and  yet,  after  all,  the  poor  fellow  had 
but  committed  one  offence,  and  not  always  that.  N.  B.  —  Not 
having  the  French  original  at  hand,  I  make  my  quotations  from 
a  friend's  copy  of  Mr.  Walter  Kelly's  translation,  which  seems 
to  me  faithful,  spirited,  and  idiomatically  English  —  liable,  in 
fact,  only  to  the  single  reproach  of  occasional  provincialismB. 

NoTB  44.    Page  218. 

"Nube:"  —  One  must  wink  at  blunders  where  royalties  are 
concerned ;  else,  between  you  and  me,  reader,  nube  is  not  the 
right  word,  unless  when  the  Austrian  throne-winner  happened 
to  be  a  princess.  Nube  could  not  be  applied  to  a  man,  as  an  old 
dusty  pentameter  will  assist  the  reader  in  remembering : 
"  Uxorem  duco ;  nublt  at  ilia  mihi." 

Note  45.     Page  219. 

"  A  Howard  by  birth : "  —  She  was  a  very  good  and  kind- 
hearted  woman ;  yet  still,  as  a  daughter  of  the  Howards  (th» 
great  feudal  house  of  Suffolk),  she  regarded  any  possible  her 
aldic  pretensions  of  an  obscure  baronet's  family  as  visible  only 
through  powerful  microscopes. 

Note  46.     Page  224. 

"  The  only  dreadful  struggle  : "  —  This  was  written  thirteen 
years  ago,  when  the  Sikh  empire  of  Lahore  was  only  beginning 
vO  be  dangerous;  and  the  Z'on  of  Lahore,  Runjeet  Sing  (the 
Romulus  of  the  Sikhs),  was  but  dimly  appreciated  by  our  own 
jfficers,  when  presented  to  him  n  their  march  to  and  frow 
A.ffghanistan.     Sing  means  lion. 


60C  NOTKS. 

Note  47.    Page  225. 

RoiUously :  —  This  ia  not  altogether  lawyers'  surplusage  :  foi 
:et  the  hot  blooded  reader  understand,  that  to  be  roulous  is  noth- 
ing like  so  criminal  in  law  as  to  be  riotous.  I  never  go  beyond 
the  routoos  point. 

Note  48.   Page  232. 

*  Scriptural,'  we  call  it,  because  this  element  of  thought,  so 
ndispensable  to  a  profound  philosophy  of  morals,  is  not  simply 
more  used  in  Scripture  thivn  elsewhere,  but  is  so  exclusively  sig- 
nificant or  intelligible  amidst  the  correlative  ideas  of  Scripture, 
M  to  be  absolutely  insusceptible  of  translation  into  classical  Greek 
or  classical  Latin.  It  ia  disgraceful  that  more  reflection  has  not 
been  directed  to  the  vast  causes  and  consequences  of  so  pregnant 
a  truth. 

Note  49.   Page  244. 

•  Poor  S.  T.  C.'  — The  affecting  expression  by  which  Coleridge 
indicates  himself  in  the  few  lines  written  during  his  last  illness 
for  an  inscription  upon  his  grave ;  lines  ill  constructed  in  point 
of  diction  and  compression,  but  otherwise  speaking  from  the 
depths  of  his  heart. 

NoTK  50.  Page  263. 
It  is  right  to  remind  the  reader  of  this,  for  a  reason  applying 
forcibly  to  the  present  moment.  Michelet  has  taxed  Englishmen 
with  yielding  to  national  animosities  in  the  case  of  Joan,  having 
no  plea  whatever  for  that  insinuation  but  the  single  one  drawn 
from  Shakspeare's  Henry  VT.  To  this  the  answer  is,  first,  that 
Bhakspeare's  share  in  that  trilogy  is  not  nicely  ascertainal. 
Secondly,  that  M.  Michelet  forgot  (or,  which  is  far  worse,  n  )t 
forgetting  it,  he  dissembled)  the  fact,  that  in  undertaking  a  series 
»f  dramas  upon  the  basis  avowedly  of  national  chronicles,  and  for 
the  very  purpose  of  profiting  by  old  traditionary  recollectiona 
Knnected  with  ancestral  glories,  it  was  mere  lunacy  tc  recast  the 
,  circumstances  at  the  bidding  of  antiquarian  research,  ao  m 
entirely  to  disturb  these  glories.  Besides  that,  to  Sbakspeare'i 
«Ccno  such  spirit  of  research  had  blossomed.     Writing  for  tb« 


xoiKt.  601 

stage,  a  man  would  have  risked  lapidation  by  uttering  a  whisper 
in  that  direction.  And,  even  if  not,  what  sense  could  there  hare 
been  in  openly  nmning  counter  to  the  very  motive  that  had 
originally  prompted  that  particular  class  of  chronicle  plays  ? 
Thirdly,  if  one  Englishman  had,  in  a  memorable  situation, 
adopted  the  popular  view  of  Joan's  conduct,  {popular  as  much 
in  France  as  in  England ;)  on  the  other  hand,  fifty  years  before 
M.  Miohelet  was  writing  this  flagrant  injustice,  another  English- 
man (viz.,  Southey)  had,  in  an  epic  poem,  reversed  this  mis- 
judgment,  and  invested  the  shepherd  girl  with  a  glory  nowhere 
else  accorded  to  her,  unless  indeed  by  Schiller.  Fourthly,  we 
are  not  entitled  to  view  as  an  attack  upon  Joanna,  what,  in  the 
worst  construction,  is  but  an  unexamining  adoption  of  the  con- 
temporary historical  accounts.  A  poet  or  a  dramatist  is  not 
responsible  for  the  accuracy  of  chronicles.  But  what  is  an  ai^ 
tack  upon  Joan,  being  briefly  the  fomest  and  obscenest  attempt 
ever  made  to  stifle  the  grandeur  of  a  great  human  struggle,  viz., 
the  French  burlesque  poem  of  La  PtLcelle  —  what  memorabM 
man  was  it  that  wrote  thai  ?  Was  he  a  Frenchman,  or  was  he 
not  ?  That  M.  Michelet  should  pretend  to  have  forgotten  this  vilesc 
of  pasquinades,  is  more  shocking  to  the  general  sense  of  justice 
than  any  special  untruth  as  to  Shakspeare  can  be  to  the  portioa 
lar  nationality  of  an  Englishman. 

NoTB  51.    Page  274. 

This  was  written  ten  years  ago ;  and  doubtless  I  had  ground 
sufficient  for  what  I  then  said.  At  present,  however,  I  have 
entirely  forgotten  the  particular  case  alluded  to,  unless  (aa  I 
rather  believe)  it  was  a  case  of  infant  funerals  with  a  view  to 
the  insurance-money. 

NoTB52.  Page  279. 
The  story  which  Aimishes  a  basis  to  the  fine  ballad  in  Peroy'i 
Baliqaes,  and  to  the  Canterbury  Tale  of  Chaucer's  Lady  Abbess. 

Note  53.    Page  291. 

"  IVansad  :  "  —  this  word,  used  in  this  Roman  sense,  illiu- 
trates  the  particular  mode  of  Milton's  liberties  with  the  Engli£> 


602  NOTE8. 

language  :  liberties  which  have  never  yet  been  properly  examined, 
tollated,  numbered,  or  appreciated.  In  the  Roman  law,  irann 
gere  expressed  the  case,  where  each  of  two  conflicting  parties  con 
ceded  something  of  what  originally  he  bad  claimed  as  the  rigor  of 
his  right ;  and  iransactio  was  the  technical  name  for  a  legal  com 
promise.  Milton  has  here  introduced  no  new  word  into  the  English 
language,  but  has  given  a  new  and  more  learned  sense  to  an  old 
one.  Sometimes,  it  is  true,  as  in  the  word  sensuous,  he  introduces 
a  pure  coinage  of  his  own,  and  a  very  useAiI  coinage  ;  but  gener* 
ally  to  reendow  an  old  foundation  is  the  extent  of  his  innovations. 
M.  de  Tocqueville  is  tharefore  likely  to  be  found  wrong  in  saying, 
that  "  Milton  alone  introduced  more  than  six  hundred  words  into 
the  English  language,  almost  all  derived  from  the  Latin,  the 
Greek,  or  the  Hebrew."  The  passage  occurs  in  the  16th  chapter 
of  his  "  Democracy  in  America,"  Part  II.,  where  M.  de  Tocqueville 
is  discussing  the  separate  agencies  through  which  democratic  life 
on  the  one  hand,  or  aristocratic  on  tlie  other,  aSiects  the  changes 
of  language.  His  English  translator,  Mr.  H.  Reeve,  an  able  and 
philosophic  annotator,  justly  views  this  bold  assertion  as  "  start- 
ling and  probably  erroneous.'" 

Note  54.    Page  292. 

Since  the  boyish  period  in  which  these  redressing  corrections 
jccurred  to  me,  I  have  seen  some  reason  (upon  considering  the 
oriental  practice  of  placing  live  coals  in  a  pan  upon  the  head,  and 
its  meaning  as  still  in  use  amongst  the  Turks)  to  alter  the  whole 
interpretation  of  the  passage.  It  would  too  much  interrupt  the 
tenor  of  the  subject  to  explain  this  at  length;  but,  if  right,  it 
would  equally  harmonize  with  the  spirit  of  Christian  morale, 

Note  55.  Page  302. 

♦•  Family  : "  i.  e.,  the  gens  in  the  Roman  sense,  or  eollectiy« 
bouse.  Shelley's  own  immediate  branch  of  the  house  did  not,  in 
t,  legal  sense,  represent  the  family  of  Penshurst,  because  the  rights 
of  the  lineal  descent  had  settled  upon  another  branch.  But  All 
branch  had  a  collateral  participation  in  the  glory  of  the  Sidney 
name,  and  might,  by  accidents  possible  enough,  have  come  to  \m 
Ma  sole  representative. 


NOTES  608 


Note  56.   Page  305. 

"  Of  Custom  :  "  —  This  alludes  to  a  theory  of  Shelley's,  on  the 
ubject  of  marriage  as  a  vicious  institution,  and  an  attempt  tc 
ealize  his  theory  by  way  of  public  example  ;  which  attempt  ther« 
is  no  use  in  noticing  more  particularly,  as  it  was  subsequently 
abandoned.  Originally  he  had  derived  his  theory  from  the  writ- 
mgs  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  the  mother  of  his  second  wife,  whose 
birth  in  fact  had  cost  that  mother  her  life.  But  by  the  year  1812, 
(the  year  following  his  first  marriage),  he  had  so  fortified,  from 
other  quarters,  his  previous  opinions  upon  the  wickedness  of  all 
nuptial  ties  consecrated  by  law  or  by  the  church,  that  he  apolo- 
pzed  to  his  friends  for  having  submitted  to  the  marriage  ceremony 
as  for  an  offence  ;  but  an  offence,  he  pleaded,  rendered  necessary 
by  the  vicious  constitution  of  society,  for  the  comfort  of  his  female 
partner. 

NoTK  57.   Page  307. 

"  Thoo  counties:"  —  the  frontier  line  between  Westmoreland 
and  Cumberland,  traverses  obliquely  the  Lake  of  Ulleswater,  sc 
that  the  banks  on  both  sides  lie  partly  in  both  counties. 

Note  58.    Page  309. 

"  At  that  time  !  " —  the  reader  will  say,  who  happens  to  be  awar« 
a*  the  mighty  barriers  which  engirdle  Grasmere,  Fairfield,  Ar- 
thur's Chair,  Seat  Sandal,  Steil  Fell,  &c.  (the  lowest  above  two 
thousand,  the  highest  above  three  thousand  feet  high) ,  —  "  what 
then  ?  do  the  mountains  change,  and  the  mountain  tarns  ?  "  Per- 
haps not ;  but,  if  they  do  not  change  in  substance  or  in  form,  they 
"  change  countenance  "  when  they  are  disfigured  from  below.  One 
totton-mill,  planted  by  the  side  of  a  torrent,  disenchants  the  scene, 
jnd  banishes  the  ideal  beauty  even  in  the  case  where  it  leaves  the 
physical  beauty  untouched :  a  truth  which,  many  years  ago,  I 
»aw  illustrated  in  the  little  hamlet  of  C!hurch  Coniston.  But  is 
ihere  any  cotton-mill  in  Grasmere  ?  Not  that  I  have  heard :  but 
if  no  water  has  been  filched  away  from  Grasmere,  there  is  one 
Vater  too  much  which  has  crept  lately  into  that  loveliest  of  moun- 
tain chambers  ;  and  hat  is  the  '^  water-cure,  '  which  has  built  unia 


•04  NOTK8. 

Itself  a  sort  of  resideoce  in  that  vale  ;  whether  a  mstic  nest,  or  a 
lordly  palaoe,  I  do  not  know.  Meantime,  in  honesty  it  must  be 
owned,  that  many  years  ago  the  vale  was  half  rained  by  an  insane 
substruction  carried  along  the  eastern  margin  of  the  lake  as  a 
basis  for  a  mail-coach  road.  This  infernal  mass  of  solid  masonry 
swept  away  the  loveliest  of  sylvan  recesses,  and  the  most  absolutely 
charmed  against  intrusive  foot  or  angry  echoes.  It  did  worse  ;  it 
Bwept  away  the  stateliest  of  Flora's  daughters,  and  swept  away,  at 
the  same  time,  the  birth-place  of  a  welL-known  verse,  describing 
that  stately  plant,  which  is  perhaps  (as  a  separate  line)  the  most 
exquisite  that  the  poetry  of  earth  can  show.  The  plant  was  th« 
Osmunda  regalia : 

•*  Plant  lovelier  in  its  own  recess 
Than  Greoian  Naiad  seen  at  earliest  dawn 
Tending  her  fount,  or  lady  of  the  lake 
Sole-sitting  by  the  shores  of  old  romance." 

It  is  this  last  line  and  a  half  which  some  have  held  to  ascend  in 
beauty  as  much  beyond  any  single  line  known  to  literature,  as  th« 
Osmunda  ascends  in  luxury  of  splendor  above  other  ferns.  1  have 
restored  the  original  word  lake,  which  the  poet  himself  under  an 
erroneous  impression  bad  dismissed  for  mere.  But  the  line  rests 
no  longei  on  an  earthly  reality  —  the  recess,  which  suggested  it,  is 
gone  :  the  Osmunda  has  fled  ;  and  a  vUe  causeway,  such  as  Sin  and 
Death  build  in  Milton  over  Chaos,  fastening  it  with  "asphaltio 
slime"  and  "  pins  of  adamant,"  having  long  displaced  the  loveliest 
chapel  (as  I  may  call  it)  in  the  whole  cathedral  of  Grasmere,  I  hav« 
lince  considered  Grasmere  itself  a  ruin  of  its  former  self. 

Note  59.   Page  314. 

"  Alastor,"  i.  e.,  Shelley.  Mr.  Gilfillac  names  him  thus  fhus 
the  designation,  self-assumed  by  Shelley,  in  one  of  the  least  iutel 
Ggible  amongst  his  poems. 

Note  60.   Page  314. 

The  immediate  cause  of  the  catastrophe  was  supposed  to  be  this 
—  Shelley's  boat  had  reached  a  distance  of  four  miles  from  tha 


NOTES.  605 

shore,  when  the  storm  suddenly  arose,  and  the  wind  suddenly 
shifted:  "  from  excessive  smoothness,"  says  Mr.  Trelawney,  all  at 
once  the  sea  was  *'  foaming,  breaking,  and  getting  up  into  a  very 
heavy  swell."  After  one  hour  the  swell  went  down  ;  and  towards 
evening  it  was  almost  a  calm.  The  circumstances  were  all  ad- 
verse :  the  gale,  the  current  setting  into  the  gulf,  the  instantaneous 
change  of  wind,  acting  upon  an  undecked  boat,  having  all  the 
pheets  fast,  overladen,  and  no  expert  hands  on  board  but  one,  mad« 
the  foundering  as  sudden  as  it  was  inevitable.  The  boat  is  sup- 
posed to  have  filled  to  leeward,  and  (carrying  two  tons  of  ballast) 
to  have  gone  down  like  a  shot  A  book  found  in  the  pocket  of 
Bhelley,  and  the  unaltered  state  of  the  dress  on  all  the  corpses 
when  washed  on  shore,  suflSciently  indicated  that  not  a  moment's 
preparation  for  meeting  the  danger  had  been  possible. 

Note  61.   Page  315. 
See  "  The  Seven  against  Thebes  "  of  ^schylus. 

Note  62.     Page  317. 

••  The  eternal  child  :  "  —  this  beautiful  expression,  so  true  in  its 
application  to  Shelley,  I  borrow  from  Mr.  GilfiUan  ;  and  I  am 
tempted  to  add  the  rest  of  his  eloquent  parallel  between  Shelley 
and  Lord  Byron,  so  far  as  it  relates  to  their  external  appearance  : 
— "  In  the  forehead  and  head  of  Byron  there  is  more  massive 
power  and  breadth  :  Shelley's  has  a  smooth,  arched,  spiritual  ex- 
pression ;  wrinkle  there  seems  none  on  his  brow  ;  it  is  as  if  per- 
uetual  youth  had  there  dropped  its  freshness.  Byron's  eye  seems 
i.he  focus  of  pride  and  lust ;  Shelley's  is  mild,  pensive,  fixed  on 
you,  but  seeing  you  through  the  mist  of  his  own  idealism.  Defi- 
ance curls  on  Byron's  nostril,  and  sensuality  steeps  his  full  large 
lips  ;  the  lower  features  of  Shelley's  face  are  frail,  feminine,  flexi- 
ble. Byron's  head  is  turned  upwards  ;  as  if,  having  risen  proudly 
ibove  his  cotemporaries,  he  were  daring  to  claim  kindred,  or  tc 
demand  a  contest,  with  a  superior  order  of  beings  :  Shelley's  is 
aalf  bent,  in  reverence  and  humility,  before  some  vast  vision  seen 
oy  his  own  eye  alone.  Misery  erect,  and  striving  to  cover  its  re- 
treat under  an  aspect  of  contemptuous  fury,  is  the  permanent  and 


SM 


SOTE8. 


pervading  expression  of  Byron's  countenance  —  sorrow,  softened 
and  shaded  away  by  hope  and  habit,  lies  like  a  '  holier  day '  of 
Btill  moonshine  upon  that  of  Shelley.  In  the  portrait  of  Byron, 
taken  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  you  see  the  unnatural  age  of  prema- 
ture passion  ;  his  hair  is  young,  his  dress  is  youthful ;  but  his 
face  is  old  :  —  in  Shelley  you  see  the  eternal  child,  none  the  less 
that  his  hair  is  gray,  and  that '  sorrow  seems  half  his  immor- 
taUty.' " 

Note  63.   Page  321.      ' 

There  is  one  peculiarity  about  Lucretius  which,  even  in  the  ab- 
sence of  all  anecdotes  to  that  effect,  would  have  led  an  observing 
reader  to  suspect  some  unsoundness  in  his  brain.  It  is  this,  and 
It  lies  in  his  manner.  In  all  poetic  enthusiasm,  however  grand 
and  sweeping  may  be  its  compass,  so  long  as  it  is  healthy  and  nat 
ural,  there  is  a  principle  of  self-restoration  in  the  opposite  direc 
tion  :  there  is  a  counter  state  of  repose,  a  compensatory  state,  as 
in  the  tides  of  the  sea,  which  tends  continually  to  reestablish  the 
equipoise.  The  lull  is  no  less  intense  than  the  fury  of  commotion. 
But  in  Lucretius  there  is  no  lull.  Nor  would  there  seem  to  be  any, 
were  it  not  for  two  accidents  :  1st,  the  occasional  pause  in  his  rav 
ing  tone  enforced  by  the  interruption  of  an  episode  2dly,  th« 
restraints  (or  at  least  the  suspensions)  imposed  upon  him  by  the  dif 
ficulties  of  argument  conducted  in  verse.  To  dispute  metrically 
is  as  embarrassing  as  to  run  or  dance  when  knee-deep  in  sand. 
Else,  and  apart  from  these  counteractions,  the  motion  of  the  style 
is  not  only  stormy,  but  self-kindling  and  continually  accelerated. 

Note  64.   Page  322. 

"  Habit  of  body  :  "  but  much  more  from  mismanagement  of 
his  body.  Dr.  Johnson  tampered  with  medical  studies,  and  fancied 
himself  learned  enough  to  prescribe  for  his  female  correspondents 
The  afFectionateness  with  which  he  sometimes  did  this  is  interest- 
ng  ;  but  his  ignorance  of  the  suhject  is  not  the  less  apparent.  In 
3  is  own  case  he  had  the  merit  of  one  heroic  self-conquest ;  he 
woaned  himself  from  wine,  having  once  become  convinced  that  it 
was  injurious.  But  he  never  brought  himself  to  take  regular 
•xercise.     He  ate  too  much  at  all  times  of  his  life     And  in  anothej 


NOTKB. 


G07 


point,  he  betrayed  a  thoughtlessness,  which  (though  really  com- 
mon as  laughter)  is  yet  extravagantly  childish.  Everybody  knows 
that  Dr.  Johnson  was  all  his  life  reproaching  himself  with  lying 
too  long  in  bed.  Always  he  was  sinning  (for  he  thought  it  a 
Bin)  ;  always  he  was  repenting  ;  always  he  was  vainly  endeavoring 
to  reform.  But  why  vainly  ?  Cannot  a  resolute  man  in  six  weeks 
bring  himself  to  rise  at  any  hour  of  the  twenty-four  ?  Certainly 
he  can  ;  but  not  without  appropriate  means.  Now  the  Doctor  rose 
about  eleven,  a.  m.  This,  he  fancied,  was  shocking  ;  he  was  de- 
termined  to  rise  at  eight,  or  at  seven.  Very  well  ;  why  not  ?  But 
will  it  be  credited  that  the  one  sole  change  occurring  to  the  Doc- 
tor's mind,  was  to  take  a  flying  leap  backwards  from  eleven  to 
eight,  without  any  corresponding  leap  at  the  other  terminus  of  his 
sleep?  To  rise  at  eight  instead  of  eleven,  presupposes  that  a  man 
goes  off  to  bed  at  twelve  instead  of  three.  Yet  this  recondite 
truth  never  to  his  dying  day  dawned  on  Dr.  Johnson's  mind. 
The  conscientiotis  man  continued  to  offend  ;  continued  to  repent ; 
continued  to  pave  a  disagreeable  place  with  good  intentions,  and 
daily  resolutions  of  amendment  ;  but  at  length  died  full  of  years 
without  having  once  seen  the  sun  rise,  except  in  some  Homeric 
description,  written  (as  Mr.  Fynes  Clifton  makes  it  probable) 
thirty  centuries  before.  The  fact  of  the  sun's  rising  at  all,  the 
Doctor  adopted  as  a  point  of  faith,  and  by  no  means  of  personal 
knowledge,  from  an  insinuation  to  that  effect  in  the  most  ancient 
of  Greek  books. 

Note  65.    Page  324. 

One  of  these  examples  is  equivocal,  in  a  way  that  Mr.  Gilfillan 
is  apparently  not  aware  of.  He  cites  Tickell,  "  whose  very  name  " 
he  says)  "  savors  of  laughter,"  as  being,  "  in  fact,  a  very  happy 
fellow."  In  the  first  place,  Tickell  would  have  been  likely  to 
'*  square  "  at  Mr.  Gilfillan  for  that  liberty  taken  with  his  name  ;  or 
aaight  even,  in  Falstaff 's  language,  have  tried  to  "  tickle  his  ca- 
jistrophe."  It  is  a  ticklish  thing  to  lark  with  honest  men's  names. 
But,  secondly,  which  Tickell  ?  For  there  are  two  at  the  least  in 
•Jie  field  of  English  literature ;  and  if  one  of  them  was  "  very 
Diippyt"  the  chances  are,  according  to  D.  Bernoulli  and  De  Moivre, 
Jiat  the  other  was  particularly  miserable.     The  first  Tickf  11.  who 


109  NOTHk 

may  le  described  as  Addison's  Tickell,  never  tickled  anything,  that 
I  know  of,  except  Addison's  vanity.  But  Tickell  the  second,  who 
came  into  working  order  about  fifty  years  later,  was  really  a  very 
pleasant  fellow.  In  the  time  of  Burke  he  diverted  the  whole  na- 
tion by  his  poem  of  "  Anticipation,'"  in  which  he  anticipated  and 
dramatically  rehearsed  the  course  of  a  whole  parliamentary  d» 
bate  (on  the  king's  speech),  which  did  not  take  place  till  a  week 
or  two  afterwards.  Such  a  mimicry  was  easy  enough  ;  but  thai 
iid  not  prevent  its  fidelity  and  characteristic  truth  from  delighting 
the  political  world. 

Note  66.    Page  326. 

\Addis<m  married  the  Countess  of  Warwiclc^  There  is  a  well- 
known  old  Irish  ballad  repeatedly  cited  by  Maria  Edgeworth, 
which  opens  thus :  — 

"  There  was  a  young  man  in  Ballinacrasy 
That  took  him  a  wife  to  make  him  unasy." 

8ach  to  the  letter  was  the  life-catastrophe  of  Addison. 

Note  67.   Page  327. 

For  the  same  reason,  I  refrain  from  noticing  the  pretensions  of 
Bavage.  Mr.  Gilfillan  gives  us  to  understand,  that  not  fron: 
want  of  room,  but  of  time,  he  does  not  (which  else  he  could) 
prove  him  to  be  the  man  he  pretended  to  be.  For  my  own  part,  1 
believe  Savage  to  have  been  the  vilest  of  swindlers  ,  and  in  these 
days,  under  the  surveillance  of  an  active  police,  he  would  have  lost 
the  chance  which  he  earned  of  being  hanjjed,*  liy  having  long  pre- 
viously been  transported  to  the  plantations.     How  can  Mr.  Gilfil- 

*  Savage  had  actually  received  sentence  of  death  for  murder 
perpetrated  in  a  tavern  brawl.  The  royal  clemency  interposed 
most  critically  to  save  him  from  the  scaffold ;  but  under  an  im- 
pression utterly  without  foundation  as  to  his  maternal  persecu- 
tions. Not  he  by  his  mother,  but  his  pretended  mother  by  him, 
was  Bystematically  persecuted  for  years,  as  a  means  of  extorting 
inoDey.  Suppose  his  pretensions  true,  would  a  person  of  any 
nanliness  have  sought  to  win  his  daily  bread  from  the  terron  of 
tier  whom  he  claimed  as  his  mother  ^ 


NOTES.  609 

.an  allow  himself,  in  a  case  of  this  nature,  to  speak  of  "  univemal 
hnpreesion  "  (if  it  had  really  existed)  as  any  separate  ground  of 
rredibility  for  Savage's  tale  ?  When  the  public  have  no  access  at 
k11  to  sound  means  of  judging,  what  matters  it  in  which  direction 
their  "impression  "  lies,  or  how  many  thousands  swell  the  belief, 
for  which  not  one  of  all  these  thousands  has  anything  like  a  reason 
to  offer  ? 

Note  68.    Page  329. 

"Fiery  particle:"  —  Lord  Byron  is  loosely  translating  the 
•xpression  of  Horace  —  divince  particiua  aurce. 

Note  69.   Page  331. 

'•  Jt folly."  We  English  limit  the  application  of  this  term  to 
buildings  ;  but  the  idea  might  as  fitly  be  illustrated  in  other  ob- 
jects. For  instance,  the  famous  galley  presented  to  one  of  the 
Ptolemies,  which  offered  the  luxurious  accommodations  of  capitnl 
cities,  but  required  a  little  army  of  four  thousand  men  to  row  it, 
whilst  its  draught  of  water  was  too  great  to  allow  of  its  often  ap- 
proaching the  shore;  this  was  "  a  folly "  in  our  English  sense 
Bo  again  was  the  Macedonian  phalanx.  The  Roman  legion  could 
form  upon  any  ground  ;  it  was  a  true  working  tool.  But  the  pha- 
lanx was  too  fine  and  showy  for  use.  It  required  for  its  manoeu- 
vring a  k)rt  of  opera  stage,  or  a  select  bowling-green,  such  as  few 
fields  of  battle  offered. 

Note  70.   Page  331. 

I  had  written  the  "  Empress  Catherine ;  "  but,  on  second 
thoughts,  it  occurred  to  me  that  the  "  mighty  freak  "  was,  in  fact, 
due  to  the  Empress  Elizabeth.  There  is,  however,  a  freak  con- 
uected  with  ice,  not  quite  so  "mighty,"  but  quite  as  autocratic, 
ind  even  more  feminine  in  its  caprice,  which  belongs  exclusivelj 
o  the  Empress  Catherine.  A  ladj  had  engaged  the  affections  of 
•ome  young  nobleman,  who  was  regarded  fevorably  by  the  imp^ 
•ial  eye.  No  pretext  offered  itself  for  interdicting  the  marriage  , 
But,  by  way  of  freezing  it  a  little  a*  ♦he  outset,  the  Czarina  coupled 
rith  her  permission  this  condition  -    that  the  wedding  night  shotil  j 


810 


be  pas6ed  by  the  young  couple  on  a  mattress  of  her  gift.  Hie 
mattress  turned  out  to  be  a  block  of  ice,  elegantly  cut,  by  the 
tourt  upholsterer,  into  the  likeness  of  a  well-stuflFed  Parisian  mat* 
tress.  One  pities  the  poor  bride,  whilst  it  is  difficult  to  avoid 
laughing  in  the  midst  of  one's  sympathy.  But  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  no  ukase  was  issued  against  spreading  seven  Turkey  carpeis, 
by  way  of  under-blankets,  over  this  amiable  nuptial  present. 
Amongst  others  who  have  noticed  the  story,  is  Captain  Colvill*- 
Frankland,  of  the  navy. 

Note  71.   Page  334. 

Bergmann,  the  German  traveller,  in  his  account  of  his  long 
rambles  and  residence  amongst  the  Kalmucks,  makes  us  acquainted 
with  the  delirious  vanity  which  possesses  these  demi-savages. 
Their  notion  is,  that  excellence  of  every  kind,  perfection  in  the 
least  things  as  in  the  greatest,  is  briefly  expressed  by  calling  it 
Kalmuckish.  Accordingly,  their  hideous  language,  and  their  vasi 
national  poem  (doubtless  equally  hideous),  they  hold  to  be  the 
immediate  gifts  of  inspiration  :  and  for  this  I  honor  them,  as  each 
generation  learns  both  from  the  lips  of  their  mothers.  This  great 
poem,  by  the  way,  measures  (if  I  remember)  seventeen  English 
miles  in  length  ;  but  the  most  learned  man  amongst  them,  in  fact 
a  monster  of  erudition,  never  read  further  than  the  eighth  mile- 
stone. What  he  could  repeat  by  heart  was  little  more  than  a  mile 
and  a  half;  and,  indeed,  that  was  found  too  much  for  the  choleric 
part  of  his  audience.  Even  the  Kalmuck  face,  which  to  us  foolish 
Europeans  looks  so  unnecessarily  flat  and  ogre-like,  these  honest 
Tartars  have  ascertained  to  be  the  pure  classical  model  of  human 
oeauty, —  which,  in  fact,  it  is,  upon  the  principle  of  those  people 
who  hold  that  the  chief  use  of  a  face  is  —  to  frighten  one  s  enemy. 

Note  72.    Page  385. 

"  Aa/j.iraSt>(f>opot:  "  —  Lamp  or  torch  bearers,  the  several  parfc- 
i«s  to  an  obscure  Grecian  game.  The  essential  point  known  to 
ta  moderns  is,  that,  in  running,  they  passed  on  to  each  other  • 
lighted  torch,  under  what  conditions,  beyond  that  of  keeping  th« 
•orch  burning,  is  very  imperfectly  explained.    But  already  thii 


NOTES. 


611 


fcatnra  of  the  game,  without  further  details,  qualifies  the  par^ 
kakers  in  it  to  represent  symbolically  those  who,  from  genera- 
tion to  generation,  pass  onwards  the  traditions  of  gathering 
knowledge. 

Note  73.    Page  392. 

I  use  the  word  prophet  in  the  ordinary  sense.  Yet  in  strict- 
ness this  is  not  the  primary  sense.  Primarily  it  means  and 
Scripturally  it  means  —  interpreter  of  the  divine  purposes  and 
thoughts.  If  those  purposes  and  thoughts  should  happen  to  lurk 
in  mysterious  doctrines  of  religion,  then  the  prophet  is  simply 
an  exegetes,  or  expounder.  But,  it  is  true,  if  they  lurk  in  the 
dark  mazes  of  time  and  futurity  unrolling  itself  from  the  central 
Dresent,  then  the  prophet  means  a  seer  or  reader  of  the  future, 
!n  our  ordinary  modern  sense.  But  this  modern  sense  is  neither 
•ihe  Mahometan  sense,  nor  that  which  prevails  in  the  New 
Testament.  Mahomet  is  the  prophet  of  God  —  not  in  the  sense 
*f  predicter  from  afar,  but  as  the  organ  of  communication  be- 
tween God  and  man,  or  revealer  of  the  divine  will.  In  St.  Paul, 
again,  gifts  of  prophecy  mean  uniformly  any  extraordinary 
qualifications  for  unfolding  the  meaning  of  Scripture  doctrines, 
or  introducing  light  and  coherency  amongst  their  elements,  and 
perhaps  never  the  qualifications  for  inspired  foresight.  In  the 
true  sense  of  the  word,  therefore,  Newton  was  the  prophet  of 
Kepler,  i.  e.,  the  exegetic  commentator  on  Kepler,  not  Kepler  of 
Newton.  But  the  best  policy  in  this  world  is  —  to  think  with 
ihe  wise,  and  (generally  speaking)  to  talk  with  the  vulgar. 

Note  74.     Page  394. 

"  Park : "  —  It  is  painful,  but  at  the  same  time  it  is  affecting, 
tor  the  multitudes  who  respect  the  memory  of  Park,  to  know, 
that  this  brave  man's  ruin  was  accomplished  through  a  weak 
olace  in  his  own  heart.  Park,  upon  his  second  expedition,  was 
olaced  in  a  most  trying  condition.  We  all  know  the  fable  of 
ihe  traveller  that  resisted  Boreas  and  his  storms  —  his  hail,  his 
uleet,  and  his  blustering  blasts ;  tnere  the  travellor  was  strong ; 
»ut  he  could  not  resist  Phoebus,  could  not  resist  his  flattering 
({ales  and  his  luxurious  wooings  He  yielded  to  the  fascinations 
if  love,  what  he  had  refused  t^  the  defiances  of  malice.  Such 
temptations  had  Park  to  face  when,  tor  the  second  time,  he 


812  NOTES. 

reached  the  coast  of  Africa.  Had  the  world  frowned  apon  him 
M  once  upon  the  same  coast  it  did,  then  he  would  have  found  a 
nobility  in  his  own  desolation.  That  he  could  have  faced ;  and, 
without  false  bias,  could  have  chosen  what  was  best  on  the 
whole.  But  it  happened  that  the  African  Association  of  London 
had  shown  him  great  confidence  and  great  liberality.  His  sen- 
Bitive  generosity  could  not  support  the  painful  thought  —  that, 
by  delaying  his  expedition,  he  might  seem  to  be  abusing  theii 
kindness.  He  precipitated  his  motions,  therefore,  by  one  entire 
half  year.  That  original  error  threw  him  upon  the  wrong  season, 
and  drew  after  it  the  final  error  which  led  to  the  conflict  in 
which  he  perished. 

NoTB  75.    Page  395. 

Crentlemen-commoners :  —  The  name  is  derived  from  our  Ox- 
ford word  commons,  which  in  ordinary  parlance  means  whatever 
ip  furnished  at  the  public  dinner-table,  or  fin  those  colleges 
which  still  retain  public  suppers)  at  the  supper-table.  Reflect- 
ing at  this  moment  upon  the  word,  we  should  presume  it  to  be 
the  first  two  syllables  colloquially  corrupted  of  the  Latin  com- 
mensalia.  A  commoner  is  one  who  is  a  fellow-tabler,  who  eats 
his  commensalia  in  company  with  other  undergraduate  students. 
A  gentleman-commoner  is  one  who  by  right  may  claim  to  be  a 
fellow-tabler  with  the  governing  part  of  the  college ;  although 
tn  large  colleges,  where  this  order  is  extensive  enough  to  justify 
snch  an  arrangement,  the  gentle-commoners  dine  at  a  separate 
table.     In  Cambridge  they  bear  the  name  oi  fellow-commoners. 

Note  76.     Page  397. 

Miss  Knight:  —  This  young  lady  had  offered  her  homage  t* 
Dr.  Johnson  by  extending  his  "Rasselas  "  into  a  sequel  entitled 
"Dinarbas." 

Note  77.    Page  444. 

The  two  authorities  for  all  authentic  information  about  J. 
Henderson  are, —  1.  The  funeral  sermon  of  Mr.  Aguttar;  2.  A 
Memoir  of  him  by  Mr.  Cottle  of  Bristol,  inserted  in  Mr.  Cottle'f 
i'oems.  We  know  not  whether  we  learned  the  anecdote  from 
^hese  sources,  or  in  conversation  with  Mr.  Cottle  many  yeart 
Igo     Meantime,  to  check  anv  wandering  conceit  that  Hender 


NOTES.  613 

Kn  maj  be  a  mere  local  notoriety,  let  me  inform  tbe  readex 
that  he  is  the  man  whom  Samuel  Johnson  and  Burke  went  to 
rifiit  at  Bristol  upon  the  mere  fame  of  his  attainments,  and  then 
in  Scriptural  language  pronounced  that  "the  halj  had  not  beer 
told  them." 

Note  78.  Page  444. 
One  objection  only  we  hare  heard  to  our  last  article  from  any 
person  not  a  partisan  of  Goethe:  being  plausible,  and  coming 
from  a  man  of  talents,  we  reply  to  it.  "  Surely,"  says  he,  "  it 
cannot  be  any  fault  of  Goethe's  that  he  is  old."  Certainly  not : 
no  fault  at  all,  but  a  circumstance  of  monstrous  aggravation  con- 
nected with  one  oarticular  fault  of  "  Wilhelm  Meister." 

Note  79.    Page  447. 

"Young  Corinthian  laity:"  —  Milton,  "Apology  for  Smectym- 
nans." 

Note  80.    Page  453. 

["And  yet  it  shrank  a  little: "  —  The  reference  seems  a  divided 
one.  The  ballad  of  "  The  Boy  and  the  Mantle,"  in  "  Percy's 
Reliques  "  seems  to  have  been  in  De  Quincey's  mind  as  regards 
the  incident,  while  Spencers's  adaptation  in  Florimel's  girdle 
has  misled  him  into  the  use  of  girdle  rather  than  mantle.\ 

Note  81.    Page  454. 

See  the  admirable  description  in  Mr.  Lamb's  "Dramatic  Speci- 
mens." The  situation  is  this :  a  number  of  people  carousing  in 
an  upper  room  of  a  tavern  become  so  thoroughly  drunk  as  to 
fancy  themselves  in  a  ship  far  out  at  sea ;  and  their  own  unsteady 
footing  in  '  walking  the  deck,'  they  conclude  to  be  the  naturaj 
((ffect  from  the  tumbling  billows  of  the  angry  ocean,  which  in 
tact  is  gathering  rapidly  into  every  sign  of  the  coming  storm. 
One  man  in  his  anxiety  therefore  climbs  a  bed-post,  which  he 
takes  for  the  mast-head,  and  reports  the  most  awful  appearances 
ahead.  By  his  advice  they  fall  to  lightening  ship:  out  of  tha 
windows  they  throw  overboard  beds,  tables,  chairs,  the  good 
Vmdlady's  crockery,  bottles,  glasses,  &c.,  working  in  agonies  ot 
•aste  for  dear  life.  By  this  time  the  uproar  and  hnrly-bnrly 
JM  reached  the  ears  of  the  police,  who  come  in  a  body  np-atain- 


614  K0TE8. 

but  the  drunkards,  conceiving  them  to  be  sea-gods — ^Neptune 
Triton,  &c.,  begin  to  worship  them.  What  accounts  for  this  in- 
trusion of  Pagan  adorations — is  this :  viz.,  that  originally  the 
admirable  scene  was  derived  from  a  Greek  comic  sketch, 
though  transplanted  into  the  English  drama  with  so  much  of 
life-like  effect,  as  really  to  seem  a  native  English  growth. 

Note  82.     Page  456. 

It  is  afterwards  related  to  her ;  and  the  passage,  which  de- 
scribes the  effect  upon  her  mind  (p.  317,  vol.  i.),  is  about  the 
most  infamous  in  any  book. 

Note  83.    Page  459. 

By  which  title,  for  no  reason  upon  earth  (since  she  neither 
amputates  one  of  her  breasts,  nor  in  any  other  point  affects  the 
Amazon)  is  constantly  designated  a  fair  incognita  in  a  riding- 
habit,  whom  Wilhelm  had  once  seen,  and  having  seen  had  of 
course  fallen  in  love  with,  not  being  at  the  time  in  love  with 
more  than  three  other  persons. 

Note  84.    Page  459. 

"  Just,"  in  this  use  of  it,  is  a  Hyperboreanism  and  still  Intel 
ligible  in  some  provinces. 

Note  85.    Page  460. 

It  is  true  that  in  the  end  the  person  in  question  turns  out  nal 
to  be  her  mother :  but  as  yet  Theresa  has  no  suspicion  of  such 
a  discovery.  < 

Note  86.-   Page  466. 

"  Our  friend "  is  the  general  designation,  throughout  the 
novel,  of  the  hero. 

Note  87.    Page  468. 
"  Barley-break : "  see  any  poet  of  1600-1640 ;  Sir  J.  Suckling 
[or  instance. 

Note  88.    Page  473. 

"  Vanished;  "  or  should  we  read,  perhaps,  Tarnished  1 


VOTES.  615 

Note  89.    Page  475. 

His  name  is  not  Mignonette,  Mr.  Goethe  will  say.  No :  in 
fact  he  has  no  name :  but  he  is  father  to  Mignon ;  and  there- 
fore in  default  of  a  better  name  we  cannot  see  why  we  should 
not  be  at  liberty  to  call  him  Mignonette.         , 

"  Si  tibi  Mistyllus  coquns  ....  vocatur, 
Dicetnr  quare  non  J"  ara  t'  alia  mihi  ?  " 

Not  having  a  Martial  at  hand,  we  must  leave  a  little  gap  in  the 
first  line  to  be  filled  up  by  those  who  have :  JEmiliane  is  per- 
haps the  word.  The  names  in  "  Wilhelm  Meister"  are  of  them- 
selves worthy  of  notice,  as  famishing  a  sufficient  evidence  of 
Groethe's  capriciousness  and  fantastic  search  after  oddity.  Most 
of  the  Germans,  for  no  possible  reason,  have  Italian  names  end- 
ing in  o  and  a  (the  Italians  on  the  other  hand  have  not) ;  of  one 
Italian  name  (Janit')  Goethe  himself  says  that  "  nobody  knows 
what  to  make  of  it."  Our  own  theory  is  that  it  comes  by  syn- 
cope from  Jargono. 

Note  90.    Page  476. 

Matthews,  a  man  of  extraordinary  intellectual  promise,  and  a 
special  friend  of  Lord  Byron's.  He  defrauded  all  the  expec- 
tations of  his  friends  by  dying  prematurely.  The  I'eader  will  do 
well,  however,  to  look  into  his  "  Diary." 

Note  91.    Page  478. 

Mignonette  has  taken  so  long  in  killing  that  we  have  no  room 
for  Mignon  in  the  gallery ;  but  as  she  is  easily  detached  from 
the  novel,  we  hope  to  present  her  on  some  other  opportunity 
V  a  cabinet  picture. 

Note  92.    Page  482. 

This  young  lady  we  overlooked  in  the  general  muster :  her 
dame  is  Lydia :  and  her  little  history  is  that  she  had  first  of  all  set 
her  cap  at  Lothario  and  succeeded  in  bringing  him  to  her  feet ; 
Kcondly,  had  been  pushed  aside  to  make  room  for  Theresa , 
*'^  I  y,  ^'ad  forced  herself  into  Lothario's  house  and  bedroom 


61 6  N0TK8. 

ander  the  pretext  of  norsing  him  when  wounded ;  bnt  fonrthlj 
had  been  fairly  ejected  from  both  house  and  bedroom  by  a  Btrai 
Igem  in  which  "our  friend  "  in  the  character  of  toad-eater  taket 
a  most  ungentlemanly  part. 

Nora  93.   Page  511. 

The  Critik  der  Reinen  Vemunft  was  pablished  about  Ati 
years  before  the  French  Revolution,  but  lay  unnoticed  in  the 
publisher's  warehouse  for  four  or  five  years. 

NoTB94.  Page  515. 

•  Interpenetration  : '  —  this  word  is  from  the  mint  of  Mr.  Coler. 
idge  :  and,  as  it  seems  to  me  a  very  '  laudable '  word  (as  sur- 
geons say  of  pus)  I  mean  to  patronize  it ;  and  beg  to  recommend 
it  to  my  friends  and  the  public  in  general.  By  the  way,  the 
public,  of  whose  stupidity  I  have  often  reason  to  complain,  does 
not  seem  to  understand  it :  —  the  prefix  inter  has  the  force  of  the 
French  entre,  in  such  words  as  s'entrelacer :  reciprocal  pene- 
tration is  the  meaning :  as  if  a  black  color  should  enter  a  crimson 
one,  yet  not  keep  itself  dist  net  ;  but,  being  in  turn  pervaded  bj 
the  crimson,  each  should  diffuse  itself  through  the  other. 

Note  95.    Page  517. 

*  And  panting  Time  toil'd  after  him  in  vain.' 

8o  that,  according  to  the  Doctor,  Shakspeare  performed  a  match 
tgainst  Time  ;  and,  being  backed  by  Nature,  it  seems  he  won  iC 

Note  96.    Page  517. 

Of  which  the  most  tremendous  case  I  have  met  with  was  this  , 
and,  as  I  greatly  desire  to  believe  so  good  a  story,  I  should  be 
more  easy  in  mind  if  I  knew  that  anybody  else  had  ever  believed 
\L  In  the  year  1818,  an  Irishman,  and  a  great  lover  of  whiskey, 
persisted  obstinately,  though  often  warned  of  his  error,  in  at- 
tempting to  blow  out  a  candle  :  the  candle,  however,  blew  out 
(be  Irishman  :  and  the  following  result  was  sworn  to  before  the 
ooroner.  The  Irishman  shot  off  like  a  Congreve  rocket,  passed 
with  the  velocity  of  a  twenty-four  pounder  through  I  kr<jw  no* 


KOTEB.  617 

how  many  stories,  ascended  to  the  *  highest  heaveD  of  inyention, 
via.  —  to  the  garrets,  where  slept  a  tailor  and  his  wife.  Feather 
beds,  which  stop  cannon-balls,  gave  way  before  the  Irishman's 
i«kull :  he  passed  like  a  gimblet  through  two  mattresses,  a  feather 
bed,  &c.,  and  stood  grinning  at  the  tailor  and  his  wife,  without 
bis  legs,  however,  which  he  had  left  behind  him  in  the  second 
floor. 

Note  97.  Page  520. 

•  Proceeded  to  roast  him,  —  yes  :  but  did  he  roast  him  ?  * 
Really  I  can't  say.    Some  people  like  their  mutton  underdone ; 

and  Lord might  like  his  man  underdone.     All  I  know  of 

the  sequel  is,  that  the  sun  expressed  no  horror  at  this  Thyestean 
cookery,  which  might  be  because  he  had  set  two  hours  before  : 
but  the  Sun  newspaper  did,  when  it  rose  some  nights  after  (as  it 
always  does)  at  six  o'clock  in  the  evening. 

NOTK98.   Page  521. 

Inquiry,  &c.  p-  279. 

Note  99.  Page  522 

Ctoethe  has  lately  (Morphologie,  p.  108,  Zweyter  heft)  re 
curred  to  his  conversations  with  Schiller,  in  a  way  which  plaoefl 
himself  in  rather  an  unfavorable  contrast. 

Note  100.    Page  535. 

On  this  antique  mode  of  symbolizing  the  mysterious  Nature 
irhich  is  at  the  heart  of  all  things  and  connects  all  things  into 
tne  whole,  possibly  the  reader  may  feel  not  unwilling  to  concur 
with  Kant's  remark  at  p.  197,  of  his  Critik  der  Uriheilskraft : 
*  Perhaps  in  all  human  composition  there  is  no  passage  of  greater 
sublimity,  nor  amongst  all  sublime  thoughts  any  which  has  been 
more  sublimely  expressed,  than  that  which  occurs  in  the  inscrip* 
tion  upon  the  temple  of  Isis  (the  Great  Mother  —  Nature)  :  /  am 
jiliaisoever  is  —  whatsoever  has  been  —  whatsoever  shall  be  :  and 
Ae  veil  which  is  over  my  countenance,  no  mortal  hand  has  ewtf 
laised.' 


R18  VOTES. 

Note  101.    Page  537. 

Some  class  of  ephemeral  insects  are  bom  about  fiye  o'clock  il 
the  afternoon,  and  die  before  midiii{;ht  —  supposing  them  to  liT< 
to  old  age. 

Note  102.  Pagt  537. 

If  the  dew  is  evaporated  immediately  upon  the  sun-rising, 
rain  and  storm  follow  in  the  afternoon  ;  but,  if  it  stays  and  glit- 
ters for  a  long  time  after  sunrise,  the  day  continues  fair 

Note  103.  Page  539. 

•  Market-lookert '  is  a  provincial  term  (I  know  not  whether 
used  in  London)  for  the  public  officers  who  examine  the  quality 
of  the  provisions  exposed  for  sale.  By  this  town  I  suppose  John 
Paul  to  mean  Bayreuth — the  place  of  his  residence. 

Note  104.    Page  551. 

From  this  it  should  seem  that  Costard  was  a  duck  doctor : 
we  remember  also  a  "History  of  Astronomy  "  by  one  Costard. 
These  facts  we  mention  merely  as  hints  for  inquiry,  to  the  ed- 
itors of  the  next  Variorum  Shakspeare. 

NoTB  105.    Page  552. 

Further  on  in  the  volume  we  have  five  more  pages  (pp.  307 
312)  on  the  same  noble  author;  to  say  nothing  of  three  begin 
ning  at  p.  278,  which  are  imagined  by  Miss  Hawkins  to  concern 
Horace  Walpole,  but  which  in  fact  relate,  by  every  word  and 
syllable,  to  his  brother  Sir  Edward  Walpole,  and  to  him  only. 
In  both  the  first  and  last  introduction  of  Lord  Orford,  Miss 
Hawkins  contrives  to  be  most  amusingly  and  perversely  wrong 
n  all  her  criticisms,  both  as  relates  to  his  works  and  to  his  placa 
In  the  public  esteem.  1.  Lord  Orford's  tragedy  ("  The  Mysterious 
Mother")  is  not  the  "  noxious  performance  "  which  she  supposes 
nor  is  it  a  work  of  any  genius.  It  has  no  merits  which  can  evei 
•ring  it  upon  the  stage  ;  nor,  if  it  ^jxre  brought  upon  the  stag« 
▼onld  it  therefore  be  "time  for  the  virtuous  to  fly  their  country 
jid  leave  it  a  prey  to  wild  beasts."    In  his  choice  of  a  subject. 


NOTES.  611> 

Lord  Orford  showed  a  singular  defect  of  judgment ;  In  his  treat- 
ment of  it,  he  is  not  intentionally  immoral.  With  depraved 
taste  and  feeble  sensibilities  he  is  chargeable ;  but  not,  as  Miss 
Hawkins  asserts,  with  an  act  of  "  enormous  indecency."  2.  Th« 
"Castle  of  Otranto"  is  not  "a  new  creation  in  literature,"  as  shr 
seems  to  concede  (p.  309) :  on  the  contrary,  it  is  a  most  weak 
and  extravagant  fiction,  in  which  the  coarse,  the  clumsy,  thi 
palpable,  and  the  material,  are  substituted  for  the  aerial,  tht 
spiritual,  and  the  shadowy ;  the  supernatural  agency  being,  as  Mr 
Hazlitt  has  most  happily  expressed  it  ( "  Lectures  on  the  Comic 
Writers,"  p.  253),  "  the  pasteboard  machinery  of  a  pantomime.' 
3.  With  respect  to  the  Chatterton  case.  Miss  Hawkins  is  wide 
of  the  truth  by  a  whole  climate.  She  dates  Lord  Orford's  de- 
clension "  in  the  public  favor  from  the  time  when  he  resisted 
the  imposition  of  Chatterton ;  "  and  she  thinks  it  "  not  the  usual 
justice  of  the  world  to  be  angry  at  a  resistance  proved  so  reason- 
able." Bttt,  first.  Lord  Orford  has  not  declined  in  the  public 
favor:  he  ranks  higher  now  than  he  did  in  Chatterton 's  life- 
time, or  his  own :  his  reputation  is  the  same  in  kind  as  the 
genuine  reputation  of  Voltaire :  both  are  very  spirited  memoir 
writers ;  and,  of  the  two.  Lord  Orford  is  the  more  brilliant- 
The  critique  of  his  posthumous  memoirs  by  Miss  Hawkins's 
brother,  expresses  his  pretensions  very  ably.  Secondly,  if  he 
had  declined,  it  could  not  have  been  in  the  way  supposed.  No- 
body blamed  Lord  Orford  for  resisting  the  imposition  of  Chat- 
erton.  He  was  right  in  refusing  to  be  hoaxed :  he  was  not 
right  in  detaining  Chatterton's  papers ;  and  if  he  did  this,  not 
through  negligence  or  inattention,  but  presuming  on  Chatter 
ton's  rank  (as  Chatterton  himself  believed  and  told  him),  hia 
conduct  was  infamous.  Be  this  as  it  may,  his  treatment  of 
Chatterton  whilst  living,  was  arrogant,  supercilious,  and  with 
little  or  no  sensibility  to  his  claims  as  a  man  of  genius ;  of 
Chatterton  when  dead,  brutal,  and  of  inhuman  hypocrisy ;  he 
himself  being  one  of  the  few  men  in  any  century  who  had  prac- 
^sed  at  a  mature  age  that  very  sort  of  forgery  which  in  a  boy 
of  seventeen  he  represented  as  unpardonable.  Did  he,  or  did 
he  not,  introduce  his  own  "  Castle  of  Otranto  "  as  a  translation 
'rom  an  Italian  MS.  of  one  Onufrio  Muralte  "^  Do  I  complain 
of  that  masquerading  ?  Not  at  all :  but  I  say  that  the  same  in- 
dulgence, which  shelters  Horace  Earl  of  Orford,  justifies  Cha& 
lerton. 


320  NOTES. 

Note  106.    Page  556. 

"  Fillip  me  with  a  three-man  beetle."  —  FaUtaff,  Henry  IV. 

Note  107.    Page  568. 

Seriously,  however,  Mr.  Hawkins's  translation  of  Lord  Er 
tkine's  celebrated  punning  epigram  on  Dr.  Lettsom  is  "very 
elever,"  as  Miss  Hawkins  thinks  it,  and  wants  only  a  littl« 
revision.  iSho  is  mistaken,  however,  in  supposing  that  Lord 
Erskine  meant  to  represent  Dr.  Lettsom  "  aa  illiterate : "  the 
bad  grammar  was  indispensable  to  the  purpose  of  working  the 
name  —  I,  Lettsom — into  the  texture  of  the  verse;  which  is 
itccomplished  with  great  ingenuity  both  in  the  English  and  tht 
GiMk. 


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